When melting range recovered lead, what to do with jackets

[elginrunner]

I know the can be scrapped for $, but they are awful nasty mixed in with all the ash and foreign material. Do you guys wash it? Tumbling in one of my media separators seemed the thing to do. Also I noticed that there was some small amounts of lead in some of the jackets. I guess this is inevitable, but slightly aggravating to my OCD sensibilities.....

[clodhopper]

All nasty and unwashed you can sell it for dirty brass, that's what it is, brass contanimated with other metal.
Some guys clean it up and get copper prices for it, and more power to them.
The reality is, very few jackets are pure copper.

[imashooter2]

Check with the local scrap yards before you put work into them. No one around here will touch jacket material.

[btroj]

We have a recycling bin and I put mine in that. We get money back based upon weight so I am getting at least a bit for it. I don't clean it, transport it, or anything else. I just dump it in, they handle the rest.

I am after the lead, not interested in dealing with scrap after that.

[historicfirearms]

I spent about five hours once cleaning up a batch enough that the scrap yard would take it. I got $8 for my work. Now I just trash it, not worth it for me.

[Pmc]

Rinse mine with a little citric acid. Took 35 lbs to the scrap yard last week and got #2 copper price ($2.71/ lb)

[Jailer]

I get #2 copper price for mine as well. Definitely makes it worth the effort to clean em up and scrap them.

A quick soak in water with citric acid will clean them up pretty good and you can filter them over a screen to rinse. I made a screen out of 2x4 and screen door material so I don't lose the small pieces.

[Agent1187]

I have a little perforated scoop made from a stainless steel sink strainer. I scoop from the melt with that, and shake it around a bit. This gets most of the molten lead out, and sieves out all the ash and loose dirt. I'm left with nothing but jackets and rocks. I sort out the FMJ's that didn't burst and large rocks, and take it as is. I used to get #3 copper, but they've bumped it down to brass prices since apparently the last 100 some pounds I took them messed with their copper alloy.
Still worth it in my books!

[lup]

I buy them for my personal experiments.

[cavalrymedic]

I have a large stainless fry basket that I shake the jackets in when separating them from the melt. This removes nearly all of the lead. The unbroken jackets, rocks, and other debris I sort out. I then use a large magnet to remove steel jackets, which there are a surprising number of. I get $1.45 a pound for them at a nearby scrapyard. I had to really look around to find a scrapyard that would buy them. They tested them with their spectrograph gun and saw that they are 90% copper or more and agreed to give me brass prices. It's worth the little bit of work that goes into it. I just save them up till I have several hundred pounds.

[frkelly74]

Well, I took some jacket metal in today and was a little disappointed in that I got $.30 a pound for it. I had touched it all with a magnet to get out the steel and thought I was going to do well. They called it copper bearing material. Last time they called it brass and gave me $1.21 I think. Same guys same stuff. I will take it to another yard next time I think. Still it beats throwing it away as long as you are taking other scrap in anyway. I was surprised that they took my aluminum CCI cases for breakage aluminum price, with the primers still in.I wish they were heavier.

[jetsfan-24]

i will buy the copper jackets for 1.00 a pound plus give u ur shipping back if u sort out the steel jackets first

[sparkz]

Call around to local ( and some not so Local) and tell them what ya have dont sound like there all dirty just mixed mettles but no iron / steel ( use a magnet) and cut deal for all of it on a regular baisis,,
they have ways to clean it up, so let them, its stil cash in the till so

I wired tons of scrap yards and saw lots of stuff like that so right yard will give ya a price

Hope I Sparked an Idea

Patrick

[sparkz]

Call around to local ( and some not so Local) and tell them what ya have dont sound like there all dirty just mixed mettles but no iron / steel ( use a magnet) and cut deal for all of it on a regular baisis,,
they have ways to clean it up, so let them, its stil cash in the till so

I wired tons of scrap yards and saw lots of stuff like that so right yard will give ya a price

Hope I Sparked an Idea

Patrick

[40Super]

I have one scrap plant that will do anything to make your scrap sound worthless and not pay jack for it, even the bucket that was picket from an indoor range and was never in the melt, the other gave me top price for the stuff that was clean and a bit less for the "dirty" pile(from the pot and soaked in a citric solution). It adds up to quite a bit for cleaning the jackets to make it worth it.

[gunoil]

Guess we'll just have to make this:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XnVrYKWLnWg

[cavalrymedic]

I have considered using a home foundry to melt the jackets and pour them into shiny copper ingots. Maybe I could get no1 Copper//$3+ a pound. There would be a lot of work involved, but at the quantities that I accumulate, I am certain it would be worth it. I am still studying the problem. It looks as if when really heated, the copper and zinc in brass separate and I might easily get high purity copper.

[elginrunner]

I'm a blacksmith, and have a forge. I guess I'd just need some sort of crucible.....

[shadygrady]

some one gave me a 5 g bucket full of jacket melt a few yrs back it had slag /fish hooks/ steel bolts/ trash / nails i set it in the bottom of a truck load of shread got .1025 lb was not going to stick my hands in that mess

[Andrew Mason]

i just trash mine.

if i had a way to melt them down, i definatly would, and cast them into ingots

[lup]

I'm still buying for projects.

[bobthenailer]

I recently got $2.45 a pound for my smelted jackets ! 57 lbs = $139.00 , I got dirty copper price, as one formula for gliding metal jackets is 95% copper.

[lup]

What are you using to smelt the copper? I need to improve my process.

[Any Cal.]

I have quite a few jackets and a forge. What can be used as a crucible for copper?

[John in WI]

I get #2 prices for mine. I don't do a whole lot of range scrap, but last time I did a run (a few 5 gallon pails full) I made a quick and dirty cleaner. I punched a bunch of holes in the bottom of a 5 gallon pail, then covered that with some coarse pond filter material (it's this kind of plastic spongy stuff they use for landscaping). Then I put that into another bucket with a squirt of dish soap. I shook it around and pulled it in and out of the water and that got a huge amount of **** off of copper. Then I ran over it with a strong speaker magnet to get rid of the steel and that was it.

[bslim]

The jacketed lead I get is from an indoor range that uses rubber blocks for a back stop. The bullets are realatively clean when all of the rubber bits and pieces are removed. After smelting and removing the jackets, I get #2 scrap copper prices,roughly $2.00/lb. Well worth the effort. I have 18 / 5gal. pails to smelt this spring and my back is already hurting just thinking about it. I wouldn't scrap copper jackets until I checked out all available markets for them.

[lup]

I have quite a few jackets and a forge. What can be used as a crucible for copper?

You can use something as simple as a flower pot.