Odd Lead Finds

[bowfin]

One never knows when or where they will get an opportunity to add to their lead stash, so if you got lead from an unexpected source, let's hear it. Here's mine:

Last week, The safety director of our company was hauling the rescue dummy out of the pickup so he could send it in for repairs. Seems it was leaking ballast out, which it has so it weighs as much as a real person.

After we moved it, I volunteered to sweep up the storage room, and filled a disposable cup with two pounds of lead shot. Not by biggest or easiest lead acquisition, but certainly unexpected.

[clodhopper]

I showed the young man next door my bullet moulds and let him shoot my 1911.
A couple days later he brought over a 15 lb drift boat anchor.
It's a truncated pryamid with a bolt through it.

[cheese1566]

Coworker who does dirt track car racing brought in his lead "shavings", about 3 pounds. He drilled through the lead ballast/weight blocks to bolt into his race frame channel. He knew of my addiction and saved the remnants rather than sweeping them away!

[Defcon-One]

Not odd, but interesting!

Five or six months ago my wife asked me how I got lead from tire shops. I told her what I do and she said that she would like to try it. So, I gave her two empty 5 gallon buckets with lids to try it for herself. She drives around the state for work and has stopped at and started relationships with quite a few tire shop owners. So far she has brought in over five - 100 pound buckets, about 425 pounds of clean, ingotized WW Lead.

She loves it! She says it is a fun challenge to get it cheap or, even better, for free.

[fatelk]

I was plinking out in the hills a while back, where a lot of people shoot, and picked up some brass. I noticed a 12ga shell that was unfired, looked around and picked up a full box worth that was dumped out on the ground and ran over. I salvaged the shot.

[crawfobj]

Not odd, but interesting!

Five or six months ago my wife asked me how I got lead from tire shops. I told her what I do and she said that she would like to try it. So, I gave her two empty 5 gallon buckets with lids to try it for herself. She drives around the state for work and has stopped at and started relationships with quite a few tire shop owners. So far she has brought in over five - 100 pound buckets, about 425 pounds of clean, ingotized WW Lead.

She loves it! She says it is a fun challenge to get it cheap or, even better, for free.

That's GREAT! I'm fairly certain my wife could come up with far, far more wheel weights than I could, just by asking. Now if I could convince her to try....

You married well, my friend! :drinks:

[Suo Gan]

Not odd, but interesting!

Five or six months ago my wife asked me how I got lead from tire shops. I told her what I do and she said that she would like to try it. So, I gave her two empty 5 gallon buckets with lids to try it for herself. She drives around the state for work and has stopped at and started relationships with quite a few tire shop owners. So far she has brought in over five - 100 pound buckets, about 425 pounds of clean, ingotized WW Lead.

She loves it! She says it is a fun challenge to get it cheap or, even better, for free.

Women are better at it than men for sure.

[Suo Gan]

Bought a trailer at a sale, pipe holding the tongue up was a 70 pound chunk of lead.

[evan price]

Cleaned out a pile of debris from a demolished shed at my neighbor's place before he sold it, and in the rubble was a nice lead sewer-stack roof boot.

[VA Shooter]

we have an old bucket truck at work I have been here for 20 years and worked out of this truck 50 times or more the front bumper is 1 foot wide by 6ft long and has a lid on it that I always thought was a tool storage but it was made as an counter balance an old timer came by the shop and I told him that I was casting my own boolits and he said that 25 years ago he had to fill the bumper of the bucket truck with ww and sure enough I lifted the lid and that sucker was full of ww man am I lucky I have a bunch of lead in my shed now

[bslim]

Fellow that knows I shoot came over and asked me if I had a 1000 38 cal bullets I could spare. I said sure but I really could use some lead WW's in exchange. Now, our standing deal is 1000 lead cast bullets/ 130 grn for a full 5 gal pail of WW's. His buddy now wants to get in on the deal. I can use all the help I can get before they ( WW's ) disappear.

[Ronbo256]

Suo Gan, that's a real twofer! A trailer and 75 lbs of lead in one deal!

[Defcon-One]

That's GREAT! I'm fairly certain my wife could come up with far, far more wheel weights than I could, just by asking. Now if I could convince her to try....

You married well, my friend! :drinks:



Women are better at it than men for sure.


Thanks, and your right, I did marry well!

She is a natural, people just like her. The guys at these tire shops really pep up when she walks in. They want to help her if they can. (They treat me more like an intruder until I explain why I am there.) The best part is they even dump it in her buckets and load it in the back for her. All I have to do is unload it.

Women are truly better at some things and mooching lead is definitely one of them! She has double my lead WW input!

UPDATE: She just got another 275 lbs. of COWW for $25.00 today! WOW!

DC-1

[Aaron]

The Neonatal Intensive Care Unit nurses save the lead gonad shields for me instead of throwing them away.

Aaron

[Defcon-One]

The Neonatal Intensive Care Unit nurses save the lead gonad shields for me instead of throwing them away.

Aaron

I'm sure that it is especially suitable for pouring Lead BALLS!


*****

Sorry guys, I could not resist!

DC-1

[SWMBO]

That's just wrong. Funny, but wrong.

[Aaron]

They work great for BALLS, being pure lead and all! :-)

[a.squibload]

... She drives around the state for work and has stopped at and started relationships with quite a few tire shop owners...

So, is it OK for you to get a couple new girlfriends?:kidding:

[evan price]

Took in a truckload of copper wire and aluminum from scrap at work, while there I asked them if they had any lead..showed me two totes, one half full of wheel weights (but a quick look showed a high concentration of iron and zinc even the stickons!) and another overflowing with soft sheet lead, fishing sinkers, lyman ingots of soft lead, and a bunch of linotype all dumped together.
Asked about price- "Boss isn't in this week, come back next week."

May be hope here!

[Suo Gan]

Suo Gan, that's a real twofer! A trailer and 75 lbs of lead in one deal!

I thought it was a galvanized pipe, UNTIL I TRIED TO PICK IT UP!

[birdadly]

Not too "odd" of a lead find perhaps, but I didn't want to start a thread bragging that I FINALLY was given some lead. I now agree that it PAYS to tell everyone you know that you're looking for lead.

A neighbor of mine is some type of machinist and he creates molds for companies I believe. This pic is part of the product of a mold he built and so they did a test run with lead. I didn't want to show a very good pic in case it's something important and I shouldn't be showing it... but I think it's just some type of pipe.

Anyway, they chunked it up, a few people took some for decoy weights I guess, and he thought of me and grabbed a nice, 65# piece for his nice neighbor ...ME!!

I imagine I should have it tested to see what exactly it is though. Have a good one!! -Brad

[JSnover]

Birdadly, ask your buddy what alloy he used. If he does a lot of that kind of work, his shop might use a preferred alloy for mold testing. You could have it analyzed but he might already have the specs on hand.

[Harter66]

I stopped in the company garage today to get a door handle fixed on my work truck and check on my WW stash from the company tire shop,none on the new fleet. 1 of the mechanics asks what I'd pay, well not much for unknown "lead". He says I've got some pan shaped "ingots"(I know why there's been no WW for a month plus),and some stuff I got from the newspaper office it looks like it was poured over the type for a set block or something like that there's probably 200# in each of 2 boxes, I was gonna scrap it out. Then he says afteer substantial storey swapping, come by take a look maybe 100 for all of it.

That's .20 /# with a possiblity of 200# of lino . Heck yea I'm dropping by just a block out of the way.

A friend of my wifes runs 3 nights a week and does 5/10k runs picks up 3or 4 WW a week too,I like her even if she is a vegetarian environmental specialist. That's got to be the oddest score.

[white eagle]

not odd and certainly not bragging
but I did score 10 isotope cores today
that brings my total to 16

[GaryN]

I like this topic. It helps me think of ideas to feed the habit.

[supe47]

Door frames. X-ray rooms need lead lined walls and doors....forgot about the door frames. Someone ordered the wrong frame, swing or size, and ended up with a couple of lead lined door frames they could not use or just...throw away. So I took the frames off their hands. 120 lbs. from one frame, 40 from the other. Pure lead sheets were glued on and peeled right off. A nice score of 160 lbs. for a couple hours of work.

[birdadly]

Odd find: lead on my desk chair when I got into work Monday morning.

Fact: I really only know what wheel weight and linotype lead looks like. I never found lead pipe, any type of solder, xray door lead, etc.

Question: My boss said this came from a construction site, is non-magnetic and was around a pipe. Does this mean it's solder? It looks like it's been dug up; it's quite dirty. It definitely "thuds" when banged on concrete, like my wheel weights. I don't know if solder sounds like that or not.

Gratitude: Thanks a bunch guys!! -Brad

Pic:

[PaulM]

I just picked up some lady"s type ankle and small hand weights @ a yard sale $.25ea averaged min of 1 lb of clean lead shoot!

[bowfin]

I went into a small coffee shop to do some Christmas shopping, and saw that they were using a lead brick for a door stop. They said it came with the building when they bought it.

I traded them a cast iron tea pot for it and added 25 pounds to my inventory.

[koehlerrk]

Birdadly, I'd say that there is lead used to seal sections of cast-iron pipe together. Nice score!

Odd ones.... well, coming down the off-ramp from the 4-lane I saw a metallic object near the bottom... but it was HUGE! I saw it from 200 yards away huge. No way, this is NOT a wheel weight... Yup, it was, an 8 OUNCE WHEEL WEIGHT!

Another time I was visiting a member of my rifle club, and we were in his garage. Bill used to work for the phone company. He was digging around for something, and came across a box of lead disc cable seals, the ones they used for locking phone service boxes. He said they were useless as the phone co. quit using them 30 years ago, and he had a couple boxes laying around. That was just under 50lbs of pure lead when I melted it all down.

[Jim]

Birdadly, I'd say that there is lead used to seal sections of cast-iron pipe together. Nice score!.....

That's EXACTLY what that is!

[geargnasher]

Went to a garage sale once, ended up carting off two cases of 12-gauge shells that had been rained on several times. Salvaged the shot, now I wish I hadn't melted it all down! I need shot for rest bags and such and I'm too cheap to buy new stuff.

Gear

[bowfin]

Yup, it was, an 8 OUNCE WHEEL WEIGHT!

Makes me wonder how good of a tire and or wheel it would be to need an wheelweight that weighs a half pound just to make things right...:shock:

[bowfin]

Something a little different: A coworker gave me a four coffee cans full of wheel weights that he got from a mechanic friend who was closing down his shop. One coffee can I filled full of brand new wheel weights...unfortunately, they were zinc...:???:

So I sorted the new zinc wheel weights out, and then the old two watt lightbulb over my head kicked in:Bright idea: I took the them to the local tire guy, and when he saw them, he flew out of the office and into the shop to fill my five gallon bucket with old wheelweights as a trade.

[Link23]

i was metal detecting on a friends property where a old old house used to sit, and i found Lead pipes laying on the ground i asked him if i could have it, and he said just give him anything interesting i found to him in return, so i gave him a 1918 wheaty for about 300 lbs of lead smelly pipe

Link23

[robertsm53]

Couple of weeks ago I was given a bunch of lead bricks that used to be a counterweight on some old heavy equipment. After som more snow melter I went back and got another truck load, for a total of around 1900 lbs, might even have broken the 1 ton mark. What a haul for free