Mystery Metal that was Free to Me

[Ken in Iowa]

A fellow shooter gave me 2-100 pound scrap lead 'ingots'. They were cast 30 or 40 years ago, maybe more.

These came from an old timer who was scrapping metal at the time. The melt was poured into 1 gallon paint cans with a steel handle cast in. At least we can pick them up! The paint cans are partly rusted away and I can see that each can was completed in 2 pours.

Lord knows the source of the lead. Wheel weights, plumbers lead, car batteries, you name it. We have not checked hardness beyond a fingernail which does scratch it.

A buddy has a camp stove and smelting pot. Ladles, 1# and 2.5# Ingot moulds are available, so that's covered. I have a casting thermometer as well as sawdust and beeswax.

I have considered trying to cut off a sample with a sawzall (yikes) and melting it in a small pot to look for zinc signs and other crud. If it looks OK, I'll cast a few boolits and see how they look and weigh out compared to my other alloy.

We are hopefull to use this lead for Cowboy action, so a BHN of 8-10 is our target.

Any words of Wisdom? Temperature considerations?

What does car battery contamination look like?

If the sample run indicates a need for tin, shall we add 1% during the big melt?

tia
Ken

[largom]

I would melt it down at 600 Deg., pour into ingots and cast a few of your boolits for comparison. If you have a hardness tester test it after age hardening 4 weeks. Once you know the BHN you can make it into your alloy of choice.

Larry

[runfiverun]

car battery contamination is hard to see, those that have seen it close enough to tell us about it were laying on the floor.

I'd just melt down each batch and ingotize it, make some boolits and shoot them.
who cares how hard they are, if it don't fill out the mold check the heat, then add some tin[shrug]
just about everything we deal with is mystery metal it either shoots or it don't.

[RogerDat]

Almost sounds like homemade tarp or awning weights. Depending on if the handle looks like it would be something one could tie a tarp or awning to as an anchor. Homemade = whatever lead was handy and available. If they were making several one would think they would have been using a "supply" of lead. Like a bucket of WW's or Sheet lead flashing or pipe from a construction job. You know a few hundred lbs. of lead source. I would think not as many people would have had an assortment of a little of this and a little of that to make 100 lb. weights.

The scrapper may not have been the source, if they were doing it to consolidate assorted lead they would not want the steel can or handle to make it "dirty" lead. More likely to pour lead into a hole in the ground so the resulting chunk is all "clean" lead.

[MaryB]

Even if it has car battery lead it is likely old and not the newer lead alloys that are the problem.

[Ken in Iowa]

OK, I have some answers.

I shaved off about 4# from one of the cans. I melted it in a small pot skimming off the steel and dross.

Since I had just cast some 200 gr SWC 45s a few days ago, I used the same mould to cast some test boolits. They filled out just fine at the same temp that I was using with my other alloy, perhaps even better.

With my other alloy, 1.5, 1.5, 97, the average boolit weight was 205.2

The mystery metal averaged 204.0

I dumped the leftovers into a Lyman ingot mould. The ingots look just like my other alloy, just a hint of dross on top.

It looks like we may have a winner, 200# of free usable lead!

[Smoke4320]

congrads .. sounds like you really lucked into a deal :)