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View Full Version : What's the next big source of lead?



USARO4
05-10-2007, 12:11 PM
Back in the old days it was linotype. Now it's WW. My personal stockpile is probably 85% WW, 10% scrap lead from construction sites, and 5% lino. We have all seen the supply of lino dwindle down to a mere trickle with the advent of new printing technology. More and more WW are being made of zinc, steel,etc, soon that source will be drying up. Any ideas on the next big source? Range lead, construction sites? Will we be forced by necessity to buy it from dealers? Maybe we could work out group buys by members in the same geographic area. What do you guys think?

dakotashooter2
05-10-2007, 12:50 PM
That is a very interesting question. The demand for lead is increasing in China , part of the force driving the price up. As we get into new technology requiring the use of more "battery power" such as hybred vehicles the domestic demand will also increase. That plus ever stricter EPA standards may make lead quite difficult or even impossible for the non-certified user to obtain. Many older communities may still have lead water lines and that is a potential source of nearly pure lead as they are replaced.

jonk
05-10-2007, 01:07 PM
Someone pointed out, a lot of old rotting sailboats have literally tons of lead in each keel. Worth investigation.

USARO4
05-10-2007, 01:56 PM
That's a great idea jonk. I wonder how a person could get access to old sailboat keels? Do any of you old sailors out there know how to do this? I'm thinking that the easy access to WW so far has been the main reason there's so many of us casters out there. If the WW go away I'm afraid we would lose many of our fellow casters.

jonk
05-10-2007, 07:10 PM
Well living on lake erie, there are several boat graveyards I know of; some not even formal, just a lot of boats are there. I imagine I could walk in with some tools and walk out with a few hundred pounds of lead. Even for the ones where someone works there, I would imagine if I tell him I need them for casting downrigger balls (common on lake erie) he wouldn't even balk- no need to worry if he is anti gun. I'll look into it sometime this year.

Now getting to the lead in the sailboat keel.... might require a chainsaw and/or axe, to mention nothing of how to get it out; a propane torch and putty knife to scrape it up as it liquefies might work, but would be slow. If I could get enough of an area exposed, a mask, plenty of cutting oil, and the chainsaw might work IF dead soft, but I'd have to see.

Dragoon
05-10-2007, 07:37 PM
Rotten sailboats line the coast of Florida. No telling what is mixed in with the lead. I'm guessing somebody pouring a 10,000 pound keel ain't too concerned about a little garbage getting in it.

drinks
05-10-2007, 08:52 PM
Another possible source is the center of gravity weights in airplanes, usually bolted to the floor.

grumpy one
05-10-2007, 09:42 PM
My perceptions might be distorted by my background (I was a government relations guru for years) but I suggest people start thinking about a recycling solution. If the shooting sports routinely retrieved their lead and reused it, thus keeping most of it on the range more or less permanently, you would achieve a fairly positive posture as far as the public is concerned. There need be no problem in importing some lead from defunct sailboats or wheelweights as a top-up so long as it then becomes part of the recirculating lead stock of a shooting range. It's all in one place, it's handled by people who understand it, and the amount involved could even be inventoried if that ever became necessary.

If you guys were to start doing this, and once it started to look a bit organized, started talking about it, you could get yourselves into a position of managing this issue rather than eventually being managed by it. Realistically, recovering lead from berms needn't be especially difficult. There would be records of how much was recovered and how much was imported onto the range, without anybody actually making any effort at all. You might even find that people rather like the idea of ending up with as much lead as possible in these known, managed locations.

shooter575
05-10-2007, 10:05 PM
A few months ago I ran across my local gypse scrapper and he was telling me about a scraped out MRI or a cat scan from local hospital.Seems that big donut hole they slide you through is all Pb. Said there was over 3,000 lb in there.

There will allways be lead around as it is used in just too many things to just go away.You just need to be smarter and quicker than a chinaman

Easyest way to remove keel lead is burn the boat and clean up whats left.Heck you can make money on the brass and iron left

Glen
05-10-2007, 11:29 PM
We're already doing that at our local pistol range grumpy. Every year in late March we close the range down for a day and mine all of the lead out of the impact area. Club members that cast their own can buy it at a cut-rate, and everything else gets taken down to the scrapyard and recycled. It's a system that works well.

flhroy
05-11-2007, 12:17 AM
Glen, where is your range located?

Thanks

Roy

Lloyd Smale
05-11-2007, 05:57 AM
ive taken to doing a little recyling on my own. I had the brother in law make me a bullet trap at work and when working up loads all of my lead is recouped. I loose what i use for plinking but thats it. I figure I save at least half of my lead for reuse. Its got about a 25gallon steel pipe with a bottom welded in it for a catch can and since starting shooting into it the middle of last summer its about 3/4s full of good reuseable lead. It wont replace the bullets i need out of specific alloy but i figure if i save half of my lead and use that half for the plinking next year ive about double my lead stash.

twotrees
05-11-2007, 06:10 AM
Burning the boat is a good way (if allowed).

Most keels have long steel rods cast into them and huge nuts, in the bilge of the boat. Cutting torch on them will drop the keel out of it's own weight.

My little 21 footer had 1000 lbs on the bottom of it.

Sigh, land locked in Ga now.

TwoTrees

BluesBear
05-11-2007, 07:13 AM
Glen,
Where are you located?
Which range is it?

Is there any left from this years mining?

tomf52
05-11-2007, 08:28 AM
is easy. For those of you with your own ranges, a cylindrical or rectangular trap of medium weight steel fill with shredded tires (rubber garden mulch) and all the lead is not only trapped but is doesn't shred.Jacketed rounds retrieved look unfired except for the rifilng marks. Lead bullets do almost as well. For more info Google in "bullet traps" or some thing like that. This is the way commercial ranges are going. Rubber mulch can be had as low as $10 a bag (1.1 cu ft). Separation is easy, the rubber floats, lead sinks.

USARO4
05-11-2007, 08:31 AM
Lloyd, I'm going to try some recycling myself someday. I made the backstop on my range out of old railroad ties. I nail a sheet of plywood to the RR ties and then staple my targets to the plywood. As the plywood gets shot up I replace it. I figure those RR ties are collecting about 90% of all the boolits I shoot. I figure that one of these days when the RR ties are shot up I'll burn them and recover the lead. It may take awhile though, I've been shooting into that backstop for 4 years and have just cratered the front of the ties a few inches. A lot of the bullets fall out on the ground as other bullets impact the ties. I can usually pick up a pound or two after a good range session.

jonk
05-11-2007, 08:51 AM
I have gone to my range with a bucket and shovel, then ran it through a sifter and pressure washed the results to remove the leftover dirt. It works, BUT....

There are stones. There are pieces of wood. There are lots of jacketed bullets and even worse total metal jacket bullets. Each jacketed bullet needs to be removed with needlenose pliers from the melting lead. There are pieces of plastic snow fence from the target stand. God knows what else. In short, it is about 2 hours work to get about 10 pounds of lead. I may someday be reduced to that, but I'm not looking forward to it.

Granted, this is at my range. If your range uses sand or other easily siftable material, it would be easier. Our backstop is made of dirt, clay, and shale. Not conductive to easy mining.

I don't think any of the junkyard fellows would like me setting fire to a boat in their junkyard, though it would be a helluva bonfire. Still, I won't rule it out- an exceptionally well rotted boat might have the lead exposed, who knows?

Freightman
05-11-2007, 06:57 PM
Good idea about the boats, who am I kidding I am sitting at 3600 + ft and the biggist lake is thirty miles away and it has no sail boats. It is said that Amarillo gets 20" of rain a year and the other 364 days are dry. The range is a much better idea here.

imashooter2
05-11-2007, 08:20 PM
Indoor ranges are the next big source of lead.

dmftoy1
05-11-2007, 08:57 PM
I was talking to an avid sailor a week ago about this very thing and he said that MANY sailboats just get abandoned at the various yards when they've become beat up. (It's not worth paying the storage fees, etc.) He said that some of them will just take them to the shores of the various lakes and leave them. I'm wondering if it'd be worth finding some sources up on the great lakes and just making a run. I can get ahold of a 20 foot trailer and a 3/4 ton truck to tow it . . . .it'll easily handle 10k worth of lead . ..we could have a keel party some weekend . . . If somebody wants to locate some keels on the great lakes or within driving distance (say 300-400 miles) I'd be in.

Just a thought

Have a good one,
Dave

TAWILDCATT
05-11-2007, 09:30 PM
In the north[new england]there are many indoor ranges.one I belong to hired specialists to remove lead.26,000 lbs.I never could find if they got payed any money or howmuch they payed to have it removed for 20 years I and the reloading group did this work.I now live in SC.

lar45
05-11-2007, 09:59 PM
One tire shop I stopped at several months ago said they had as many buckets of WW as I wanted for $15 each. So I said I'd start with 6 buckets and then be back the next month. They came out with a bunch of 1 gallon buckets. I was very suprised, but they said that their battery dealer would give them a $15 credit for every 1 gallon bucket they saved for him.

We might need to find someone that works at a mine and get a couple of tons or something, then send it out in flat rate boxes.

gregg
05-11-2007, 10:19 PM
I notice they have big lead mines in south east Mo. ?
What do they get a LB.?
OBTW. Great Lakes lead hunt sounds like fun. :-)

Bigjohn
05-11-2007, 11:06 PM
Mining the range, no worries, at present I have sole claim to our local one.

Shifting the material, I haven't started on the berms yet, too busy scrapping it off the floor.

Sorting the material, a plastic garden sieve, in with a shovel full, shake and pick out the rubble. Jacketed into one box, cast into another, TMJ's not a problem, just give em' a whack with a hammer to split the outer.

Render into ingots , my main cost.

It will be good going until someone else wakes up to the value. I'm one of only two casters in the club but most members shoot cast in their handguns.

The backstop cannot be mined as it is soft limestone but you can pick up the loose material.

John

jhalcott
05-12-2007, 12:19 AM
there used to be quite a few casters in my club. Now there might be 4 of us. Things were so bad they made it an offense to mine the berms. Guys would dig big holes in them and sift the dirt , then leave the dirt on the ground. One guy ,Jimmy, would shoot his 44 mag 10 to 15 shots then get a "clear the range" call. He'd go down and dig his bullets out while there were several guys waiting to shoot. I really think HE was the cause of the NO MINING rule!

Jim
05-12-2007, 07:35 AM
Recently, a guy at work told me he had a bunch of sheet lead that had been removed from a X-ray room renovation job at a hospital. He gave me well over 200 lbs. and was happy to get the $20 I offered him for it.