Reclaiming indoor range lead dangers

[30hrrtt]

I have an opportunity to get some free indoor range lead but I will need to clean it out of the range. I have never shot in an indoor range. My question has to do with hazards in collecting it and cleaning. For some reason I could imagine a good amount of lead dust present. Is that probable and if so, what do you do to protect yourself? Is something like a disposable tyvek suit with mask required?

I have almost a couple tons of various lead and wheelweight material and am messing with lead all the time and don't worry about it, just keep clean and last lead test was <5. Just wondering if there are more dangers working with reclaiming the indoor lead.

[runfiverun]

just dust.
water works real well as dust control.
don't eat the lead once you have it picked up.

[btroj]

I would worry more about back injuries from lifting. Keep the dust down and all will be fine.

[Alan in Vermont]

I did one in November. Wore a Tyvek full suit and used a supplied air respirator with the pump intaking from 50' upwind. Kept one of the range exhaust blowers running all the time I was in there. Not sure how much lead dust was present but I know there was a LOT of dust from the sand bed in the bottom of the trap.

Be prepared to get into some heavy work. If your range is like the one I did you will find a solid cake of lead at the bottom of the backstop, where it meets the floor. In mine that cake was 2-2 1/2" thich and 6-8" wide and hammered into a solid mass. It took a power hammer to get it out. With limited room to attack it from there was no other way than to drive the chisel through it repeatedly to chop it into roughly square chunks and then pry each chunk out individually as they seperated from the remaing hard cake. Don't try to break it into little pieces, any that does that is much more laborious than removing 10# in a single piece. Have plywood there to lay on top of whatever is in the bottom of the trap as a place for you to lay on. There is no other way than to lay flat, effectively working "over your head" to get at the last couple feet in the back of the trap. The trap floor will be covered with jacket shards, very sharp, hence the plywood bed to protect from myriad cuts. You will probably need some sort of sifter to get the loose fragments out of the sand(if there is any). Sift it in place if you are allowed to, there is no point in taking out the sand unless it is required in your agreement with the range operators. Any sand that is mixed with the material you will be smelting increases both the time required and the fuel consumption for the smelter. There is no easy way too so it but the yield can be quite good, depending on how long it has been since it was cleaned out.

[Huskerguy]

I have reclaimed several buckets of range lead. A good mask, not just a cheap dust particle one either, and good gloves should be enough. Cleaning the stuff up can be a chore. I have use air and some use water. I will give water a try this spring. There are lots of jackets to clean out and other debris that is in the mix. Ours has a lot of fiber from the rubber matting. It is a huge mess. Almost makes a guy wonder if it is worth it after a Saturday of cleaning range lead. Given the difficulties of finding lead wheel weights this is a good way to go though. I would try some different things, develop a system and hit it really hard to build a stockpile because it is hard to say how long we will be allowed to do this. The other option is a surplus of lead can be great trading material for other reloading supplies. Have fun and don't work too hard.