Telephone lead

[odinohi]

I was at a garage sale and an older gent had some boolits for sale. I asked him if he casted boolits and he said yes. Asked him if he had any lead to get rid of and at first he said no. Then he told me he used to work for Bell. Got to talking and he walked me around behind his garage. He had 6 of these on his lawn roller for weight. Then I saw 5 more laying in the dirt. He ended up selling me those. He said that the ends where they were "wiped" were harder then the center. So when I sawed them up, I seperated the ends from the middle. Got about 100lbs out of the middle and 90lbs out of the ends. Oh ya, 35lbs of copper after I burned off the coating and wax. Has anyone ever seen or run a hardness test on this stuff? Thanks, Tom

[tomme boy]

The stuff I just got was Pure lead.

[Johnch]

Main part will be almost if not pure lead

Parts are normaly soldered togeather with 50/50 lead / tin solder

John

[Gswain]

Tom, you must be like a bloodhound with lead! Where do you find all this stuff? I sure wish I didn't live in commiefornia.

[odinohi]

Tom, you must be like a bloodhound with lead! Where do you find all this stuff? I sure wish I didn't live in commiefornia.

Even a blind dog finds a bone once in a while!

[3006guns]

I used to build those as a cable splicer..........a long time ago! The cylindrical portion should be about 1/4" thick and the end plates a healthy 1/2" or so. It's usually dead soft lead and the entire splice was wiped with solder to seal.

When a cable was "wrecked out" the line crew would cut the splices out first so that the cable could be lowered and rolled on to a reel for salvage.

When the muzzle loading craze took off in the early seventies, much of our lead sleeving stock started to disappear.....:-D. Man, do I wish I could get my hands on that stuff now! Good find.