evan price
10-31-2011, 02:18 AM
I am getting ready for winter and cleaning stuff up. I had a 5-gallon bucket full to overflowing with outdoor berm bullets I'd been meaning to melt down. When I got back from the range I always had a couple handfulls of bullets from the berm and this bucket sat by the garage and collected them. Now, it was in the way and too heavy to move so I just went ahead and melted it down where it sat.
This is all from an outdoor range, mixed FMJ, cast boolits, shotgun slugs, muzzleloader balls, etc. whatever I could harvest.
I fired up my 10-PSI turkey burner at max heat and filled my 3-gallon pot full to overflowing. After an hour or so I gave it a stir and skimmed the jackets and dumped in the last 2 gallons from the bucket. The bottom of the bucket was the consistency of stiff concrete, muddy slurry with bullets as aggregate. So I was careful to scoop it out on top of the crust to not get tinsel.
After another half hour of cooking I turned the pot down by 1/3 of the dial. I skimmed out the jackets and found some half-melted slugs that looked odd, including some large caliber FMJ type things that looked like muzzleloader sabot slugs with the core starting to extrude out but not melt. Seemed odd, so I mixed them in the melt some more and used a ladle to skim off the 5# or so of dirt that was let behind. Once I had clear surface on top I checked the temp- I was running 800 degrees F or so. I dropped the heat some more and then fluxed it twice with a ladle of used motor oil each time, stirring as it burned. Flared and roared like a rocket!
After the second fluxing I started skimming the tarry **** left behind. While stirring the pot I started getting this chunky oatmeal looking stuff. It was granular, metallic, and looked just like lead does when it is about to solidify. Seemed odd to me, so I fluxed it again with a ladle of used motor oil and stirred aggressively. The odd stuff would not flux back in. I tried using paraffin wax and a long dry stick. Still no love. The thermometer said I was holding a steady 750 degrees F approximately. The odd dross skimmed out with my scoop, and it was bleeding molten liquid metal, but as soon as it hit the air it started to solidify into a spongy metallic granular mass. Holding it over the pot, it would still drip molten liquid lead as I shook it off, but the mass was semi-solid. It also looked a dull grey, not silver.
I wound up dumping it in the dross bucket as is. In the bottom of the dross bucket I found a small puddle of nice clear smooth metal, which I figured was lead and picked out and remelted. The odd dross never changed from a spongy granular mass. I am thinking this was indeed zinc. There were a lot of TMJ range-safe type bullets in there, and I had a handful of half-melted slugs that looked like zinc wheel weights do when they don't melt all the way. Do they use zinc in lead-free bullets now?
After clearing out the suspected zinc, the remaining metal was a smooth mirror of silver. I was about to start casting ingots when it started getting dark and a light rain began! I put the lid on the pot and retreated inside for a few minutes until the rain stopped.
When I came out I noticed by the back door a chunk of lead I had used as a doorstop on the porch recently when moving furniture. I had poured it from range scrap as a counterweight on a project that had been dismantled. It was about 14# and as big as a pie plate- since it had been molded in one! I had tried to split it with an axe and it was all scarred up. I figured, why not? And set it in the pot. As I started to drop it in- bear in mind that time sometimes seems much slower!- I noticed that trapped in the deep axe cuts and gouges was rainwater from the sprinkle...I even felt the lead start to boil...but my hand had already recieved the "Drop it in" command...so I ran like hell as it boiled and spat! Luckily it only was a little water and only made a little mess on the back patio.
Pot temp was now down to an even 700 degrees, which was perfect, no more golden oxidation. That pot of lead was a pretty thing. I started ladeling ingots into my molds and when all was said and done I had a nice stack of my 4# ingots totalling about 112 pounds. AND I didn't have that big, heavy bucket of muddy slugs in my way anymore. What I did have was a gallon of dirt, a pan of "zinc?" dross, and a 3-gallon bucket overflowing with empty bullet jackets to sort for copper.
All in all a good Saturday.
And then I found another 60# of bullets in another bucket I forgot to melt...
This is all from an outdoor range, mixed FMJ, cast boolits, shotgun slugs, muzzleloader balls, etc. whatever I could harvest.
I fired up my 10-PSI turkey burner at max heat and filled my 3-gallon pot full to overflowing. After an hour or so I gave it a stir and skimmed the jackets and dumped in the last 2 gallons from the bucket. The bottom of the bucket was the consistency of stiff concrete, muddy slurry with bullets as aggregate. So I was careful to scoop it out on top of the crust to not get tinsel.
After another half hour of cooking I turned the pot down by 1/3 of the dial. I skimmed out the jackets and found some half-melted slugs that looked odd, including some large caliber FMJ type things that looked like muzzleloader sabot slugs with the core starting to extrude out but not melt. Seemed odd, so I mixed them in the melt some more and used a ladle to skim off the 5# or so of dirt that was let behind. Once I had clear surface on top I checked the temp- I was running 800 degrees F or so. I dropped the heat some more and then fluxed it twice with a ladle of used motor oil each time, stirring as it burned. Flared and roared like a rocket!
After the second fluxing I started skimming the tarry **** left behind. While stirring the pot I started getting this chunky oatmeal looking stuff. It was granular, metallic, and looked just like lead does when it is about to solidify. Seemed odd to me, so I fluxed it again with a ladle of used motor oil and stirred aggressively. The odd stuff would not flux back in. I tried using paraffin wax and a long dry stick. Still no love. The thermometer said I was holding a steady 750 degrees F approximately. The odd dross skimmed out with my scoop, and it was bleeding molten liquid metal, but as soon as it hit the air it started to solidify into a spongy metallic granular mass. Holding it over the pot, it would still drip molten liquid lead as I shook it off, but the mass was semi-solid. It also looked a dull grey, not silver.
I wound up dumping it in the dross bucket as is. In the bottom of the dross bucket I found a small puddle of nice clear smooth metal, which I figured was lead and picked out and remelted. The odd dross never changed from a spongy granular mass. I am thinking this was indeed zinc. There were a lot of TMJ range-safe type bullets in there, and I had a handful of half-melted slugs that looked like zinc wheel weights do when they don't melt all the way. Do they use zinc in lead-free bullets now?
After clearing out the suspected zinc, the remaining metal was a smooth mirror of silver. I was about to start casting ingots when it started getting dark and a light rain began! I put the lid on the pot and retreated inside for a few minutes until the rain stopped.
When I came out I noticed by the back door a chunk of lead I had used as a doorstop on the porch recently when moving furniture. I had poured it from range scrap as a counterweight on a project that had been dismantled. It was about 14# and as big as a pie plate- since it had been molded in one! I had tried to split it with an axe and it was all scarred up. I figured, why not? And set it in the pot. As I started to drop it in- bear in mind that time sometimes seems much slower!- I noticed that trapped in the deep axe cuts and gouges was rainwater from the sprinkle...I even felt the lead start to boil...but my hand had already recieved the "Drop it in" command...so I ran like hell as it boiled and spat! Luckily it only was a little water and only made a little mess on the back patio.
Pot temp was now down to an even 700 degrees, which was perfect, no more golden oxidation. That pot of lead was a pretty thing. I started ladeling ingots into my molds and when all was said and done I had a nice stack of my 4# ingots totalling about 112 pounds. AND I didn't have that big, heavy bucket of muddy slugs in my way anymore. What I did have was a gallon of dirt, a pan of "zinc?" dross, and a 3-gallon bucket overflowing with empty bullet jackets to sort for copper.
All in all a good Saturday.
And then I found another 60# of bullets in another bucket I forgot to melt...