Small freebie for asking

[RogerDat]

There is a house I drive past where the owner fills a flat bed trailer with scrap and takes it in. I stopped to give him my phone number and ask him if he sees any lead I'll pay better than the scrap yard.

He tells me he has some and takes me into the garage. Has a handful of battery terminals and two bars of 40 Sn solder. He tells me just take them, he doesn't need any money for it.

Solder is nice, especially for free. I don't pick up battery terminals from scrap yard as a rule. Too little quantity to make a large consistent batch. These terminals will end up in my dross and skimming bucket that builds up and eventually it all gets melted as misc. lead. Say every couple of years I get a 10 pound slab from that metal bucket.

I will stop by his house with a half gallon of apple cider just to say thank you. Maybe all I will get from it was meeting a nice man who gave me a couple of bars of solder for free, maybe he will come across a bunch of lead pipe or flashing or linotype some day. Point is it never hurts to ask and build up your network of folks who might become a source.

[Winger Ed.]

That's the big secret.
Who you know and develop relationships with, is at least as important as what you know.

[rancher1913]

both the little recycle yards in our town call me when they need to sell lead, I offer them more than they would get in denver and they dont have to haul it.

[lightman]

I had simular experiences. I stopped by one guys house, just like you described, and ask about lead. He led me around to his back yard and scrounged around and came up with several ingots of what he said were wheel weights, cast in metal coffee cans. Then he came up with a few bars of solder. He also refused payment. I took him quite a bit of scrap metal after that, up until the time that he quit doing the scrap thing.

Another time I stopped at another scrapper guys house and ask about lead and he showed me a large pile of float switches with the cords still attached to them. Each one had a lead donut on the cord, weighing about 1.5 pounds, that he gave to me. These float switches were the type that are used in water and waste water treatment plants.

Lead is still out there, just keep looking and asking. I call it "networking".