Finally got to mine some Boolit Ore

[Alan in Vermont]

I went to the range early yesterday to change out some target backers and try a little berm mining. It has been so wet here for the past two months that I hadn't been able to do much digging. The sand was so wet that it was about impossible to sift without plugging my screen. The top 4" or so finally got dried out, after more than a week of dry weather, that I was able to take out waht is probably on the high side of 100# of clean ore. Not bad for under an hours worth of work. Tonight it's looking like it will rain enough to dampen this up again. If I can get in a couple more sessions I'll have enough material to justify setting up to do some smelting.

[Vinne]

Nice haul, well worth the time.

[btroj]

I would kill for a sand berm.

Keep going, you will soon find you have the ability to bring home enough lead in a few days to,keep you shooting for a few years.

[runfiverun]

you get about 8-9" down and you might find some nice pockets of lead.

[Alan in Vermont]

I took 2-300# out of this berm last summer. I had high hopes of being able to mine this heavily this year. There has been a LOT of shooting since I was in there last year, in places it's just about impossible to push a shovel into it, about like trying to dig into a hard bank of coarse gravel.

I got some out of there a few weeks ago, when it was really wet. The range was flooded in spots, deep enough that I was able to fill buckets and wash the ore clean. It has dried up now so I no longer have plentiful water to do that. I'm seriously considering taking a water tank up and continuing washing the material clean. It's not much slower than dry sifting until the berm dries out quite a lot more. There is also the advantage that working wet allows me to float out the bulk of the plywood chips from the target backers which cuts way down on the smokescreen I get if I leave the wood in there.

I'm also in a moderate time crunch. IF the range dries out enough to get equipment in there we will be moving that berm back 15-20', extending it by about 50' and making it higher. When we do that any ore left in the berm will be lost forever. I can probably count on six weeks to work, if it stays dry. Every afternoon thundershower, which we get quite a few of at this time of year, wets the berm up for another 2-3 days, which is another factor in favor of washing the ore over dry screening it.

Hey, if it was easy everybody might be doing it.

[Nickle]

Yeah, the weather has been nasty and very unpredictable this year.

I've got a couple of berms I should mine, one in Lincolcn, one in Ripton.

Plus my father's berms have got to have a wealth of lead, and to my knowledge, have never been mined.

[Alan in Vermont]

A fine lead mining day was had again. In an hour and forty five minutes I filled three 5 Gal. buckets to within an inch of the top. Hauled them home in the trusty Honda Element, behind the front seats to keep the weight centered as much as possible. Drove the car right up to the target backers so no long distance lugging involved. I put the buckets into the car when they were empty and filled them right there. As full as they were I never would have been able to load them in otherwise. Used my new half-a-minow-trap sifter and dumped it into one gallon buckets then dumped those into the big pails. I was able to lift the buckets enough to get them out of the car in a sort of controlled crash fashion. I'm thinking there is 350-400 lbs. in this haul. It all came out of an area about 4 x16' and only a couple inches deep. The top few inches were dry enough to sift easily. There is still a chitload left as I haven't touched the 6" deep band where the bulk of the bullets are hammered into the sand enough to be very hard to dig out. Another week of dry weather and that should be dry enough to sift. Yeehaw!!

The mix I took out of there last year analyzed out to sb 1.49, sn .23, bi 2.34, pb 91.94, cu .27. I don't believe the Bi number at all but who knows. With 1% additional Sn it cast great. I can't imagine that the stuff this year will be any different.

[slim1836]

I got nine+ coffee cans of ore from a buddy's berm last week, best of all he mined it for me.

Did give him some .45 boolits though, gotta keep'em happy.

Slim

[btroj]

I find that a heaping full 5 gallon bucket is about 225 pounds. Filled to the top or close to it is about 200 pounds.

You got some smelting to do.

[Alan in Vermont]

I can't find the bathroom scales I used to use for weighing "stuff" but I didn't think the buckets were that heavy. If so then I have a lot more ore than I thought. It's looking like there will be a hot day or two in my future.

[btroj]

Mine always gets weighed when I get home. I find I tend to underestimate the weight.

I even keep a record of the date and weight recovered. Keeps the running total accurate.

[khmer6]

Good score. I wish there some good mining in phoenix

[mold maker]

I've only had NC red clay to mine. It is from brick hard when dry, to slimy sticky goo when wet. I sure envy you with sand berms. Even under hard conditions I now have well over 2 tons of range lead in ingots, stored in milk crated.
Look for the end of mining range lead when the EPA realizes they can shut down the ranges because of all the nasty lead involved. It may happen sooner than you think, so get it while it's still available.
For those with sand berms, get a round deep fryer basket and a 5 gal bucket
of water. Shovel into the wire basket and work it in the water. You'll wind up with a bucket of sand and another with mostly clean lead. No need transporting sand and trash home to have to dispose of.
No matter how you do it, be VERY careful, not to include live rounds to be tinsel fairies in your pot.

[mikeym1a]

I've only had NC red clay to mine. It is from brick hard when dry, to slimy sticky goo when wet. I sure envy you with sand berms. Even under hard conditions I now have well over 2 tons of range lead in ingots, stored in milk crated.
Look for the end of mining range lead when the EPA realizes they can shut down the ranges because of all the nasty lead involved. It may happen sooner than you think, so get it while it's still available.
For those with sand berms, get a round deep fryer basket and a 5 gal bucket
of water. Shovel into the wire basket and work it in the water. You'll wind up with a bucket of sand and another with mostly clean lead. No need transporting sand and trash home to have to dispose of.
No matter how you do it, be VERY careful, not to include live rounds to be tinsel fairies in your pot.

If they shut down the ranges due to lead contamination, they they would have to close off all the old Civil War battlefields. Can you imagine how many pieces of lead are lying there?

[TheGrimReaper]

I would kill for a sand berm.

Keep going, you will soon find you have the ability to bring home enough lead in a few days to,keep you shooting for a few years.That makes two of us wanting a and berm!!!

[Alan in Vermont]

It has been a good week for dumpster diving, brass picking and berm mining. Since Thursday I have brought home;

40+ 40 cal ammo boxes with the plastic inserts.

7-800 pieces of mixed brass, a lot of it 40 S&W, once fired(for sure) and matching headstamps.

7 roughly one gallon buckets of boolit ore. I weighed one today, 31+ pounds, no wonder they got heavy on the 50 yd carry to the car. The best part is that I filled four in about a half hour today. I've been mining when I can catch the range empty so I haven't been driving the car out to the berm. Today I carried the first two buckets out then figured "Screw it", drove the car out and filled two more.

I'm going to have to do some smelting pretty soon as I am fast running out of storage space for the ore, it doesn't seem to stack very nicely on shelves.

[FLINTNFIRE]

The range I belong to is clumpy red hard clay to , sand would be so sweet , I end up hand picking most when it is dry , ends up about 45 pounds after smelting . But with the scarcity of bullets there are less shooters so more often then not the range is empty , last time someone must of bought a new toy as there was lots of 45acp brass had to pick up before picking lead . Something to look forward to when home from work getting the lead out .

[kayak1]

How is everybody sifting the bullets out of the gravel? The range I shoot at has a gravel backstop. I would love some lead in trade for a few hours work. I have spent a few hundred $$'s for lead this week, I rather spend the money on powder.

[btroj]

I don't sift out the gravel, I don't have gravel.

How to mine a berm is largely dependant upon berm composition. Sand does well with sifting. Loam type soils, if dry, can sift well too. Clay, like I have, doesn't sift so well.

I pick up bullets one at a time. I take a large plastic cup down range with me. My cup hold about 13 pounds when full to the top. I en dump that into a bucket by my shooting gear. A few trips down range during a shooting session and I can get a fair amount.

I have picked up 856 pounds this year using this method. Works well for me.

Find a date that fits your berm and your needs. Keep it simple and fun. I don't do this as a commercial operation, just for my own use. I consider picking up spent bullets to be part of my shooting experience.

[monmouth]

Great thread,

I'm new to all of this and what is the best way to sift lead from sand/dirt? Should I focus on picking up the above ground lead first (lots of steel plate shooting and the ground is grey from where the targets stood)? Thank you for any advice.

[btroj]

Don't sift unless the soil is really loose and will flow well thru a hardware cloth mesh.

I pick up by hand. No shovel. I just move dirt with my boot. My best day was 131 pounds. I can get far more in a few months than I use in a year. I have over 700 pounds in ingots, all picked up one at a time.

Find a method that fits your berm, your needs, and keeps it fun. I shoots some, pick some, repeat. 3 hours, 200 rounds of handgun fired, 75 pounds of lead coming home- what isn't to like?

[RoGrrr]

The range where I mine has a hard clay berm. We've had PLENTY of rain this summer which is not conducive to good mining. When it's hot and dry I use a bamboo leaf rake to move the ore down to the bottom of the berm. I do this on Monday after a weekend of hard shooting to break up all the dirt. Makes it easier to rake/mine. What I've found this year is that there are many boolits left "cemented" into the dirt, reducing my take.
I needed something more aggressive than my bamboo rake and recalled seeing a cross between a rake and a hoe used in the concrete working industry. I believe they call it a concrete rake. Novel name, huh ?
An ordinary garden rake has too much space between the tines and a hoe just wasn't in the picture so I decided to make my own version of the concrete rake out of .100" steel. This is what I made and it worked out fantastic. I need a better handle on it tho. My temporary handle is a piece of 1 inch square tubing with a jury-rigged attachment for the head. The important part is the head, pictured here. 79268
As you can see, the head is about 20 inches long and 5 inches wide. For reference, I used a dollar bill. To give you twice as much reference, it's a TWO DOLLAR bill ! I plan to make another head about 10 inches long so I can get down into the furrows we have in the shooting lanes. Call me greedy but I want all the ore I can get !
What I'll do is break it loose with the concrete rake and gather it with the bamboo rake.
In the half hour I "worked" I got my tools out of the car, raked/picked/sifted about 100 Lbs of ore and loaded it into the car and the tools put away ! I had to run, as there were customers wanting to "use my turf".

kayak and monmouth
go to the thread - 186Lbs (http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?174512-Range-diving-186lbs&highlight=186lbs) and look at my sifter basket. It works for sand and dirt. Not sure how it will work in your gravel berm. It depends on how fine the gravel is. I used 1/4 " machine screen which catches 9mm and bigger boolits. I do get some 22s but not many.
I always collect over 100 Lbs in well under an hour. My motto is simple - get in, GET IT, get OUT ! I'm well over a thousand Lbs in the few times I've been doing this.
Our berm is hard clay and the range has been in use for over 50 years. I was thinking that there should be a thick layer of boolits under the surface. I took a mattock to the range earlier this week and dug a few test holes. Once I got past a couple inches deep there was NO lead ! Talk about being mystappointed ! Actually, I was devastated. I wanted to find a layer of lead sheet that I'd need a backhoe to mine. Oh, well. Not sure where all the lead went.

[trochilids]

Nice job, Alan. I'm jealous!

I'm fairly new to shooting and am just setting up casting. This spring we found a hillside out of town that people shoot into regularly. After the snow melt the kids and I went shooting there and saw bullets left all over the place. That was before I found CastBoolits and discovered you can melt that stuff down... What was I thinking by not just collecting 'em anyway? Snow berms keep bullets pristine, apparently. Unfortunately the scrap has been all picked up and subsequent trips yield only a handful each trip, but it all adds up. NEXT spring I'll be back right after snow melt and should be able to gather quite a bit.

The hillsides here are glacial and rocky as all get out. The bullets that happen to hit topsoil / dirt are in good shape. The ones that hit rock are pulverized. We have had best luck scavenging this summer after a rain; otherwise they are buried and look like the other rocks, unless a piece of jacket catches your eye...

My wife and I are looking to buy 20 acres out of town this fall. If that works out I have plans for my own range. On one corner is a depression that abuts a small hillside with a mile of forest beyond before the next house (and then not even in a direct line). Dug out a bit and lined with trees / dirt from the home building and road building excavation, I think it will make a safe and enjoyable place to plink (and collect my own bullets in a suitable trap)... Will keep you posted.

[John in WI]

I've only had NC red clay to mine. It is from brick hard when dry, to slimy sticky goo when wet. I sure envy you with sand berms. .


I'm with you--I'd love a sand berm! The berm at my club is a clay hill side with trees (live and fallen). If I can't pick it off the top, I probably will never find it. I hit the gold mine when they replaced the log berm they used on the shotgun slug sight-in range. Easy picking an ounce at a time!

[Alan in Vermont]

I got another heaping 5 gal. bucket out this morning. At first I couldn't find the trowel I normally use for digging so I just scooped the sifter into the top few inches of loose sand to fill it. Got a huge percentage of plywood chips so this batch WILL need to get the wood floated out. Started breaking the handle off the trowel, had no round pointed shovel available, several sguare shovels but those just won't dig into the mother lode. I thought I had a "drain spade", a D-handled shovel with a stiff blade about 15" long and only 4" wide. Yup, I've got one but I think I used it in the salt pile (used to plow snow and spread salt in the winter) and the socket was totally rusted into pieces, that one is junk. :( New drain spade is gonna wreck $30,,, OUCH! I did find a small pick and a D-handled round shovel that will go with me the next time I mine ore.

Weather is nasty humid right now. Once it hits 80° I am finding that I just can't function like I used to. I had planned to smelt as I collected ore, that's what I did last summer, but it's just not going to happen this year, come on, October!!