Lead cover on telephone wire.

[Keyman]

The local recycle area at the dump had copper phone wire coated with lead. It is about 5/8 inches across. I did pick it up, and cut it all into 6 inch chunks. These fill three 5 gallon buckets. I do not have the hand strength to slice these length wise and remove the wire, so was going to melt the whole mess down. Yes it will smoke and smell, and be a mess, but will pick a day when the wind will blow away from the neighbors. My real question is how much copper will go into the lead? Will it make the lead hard and brittle? The other thing is I will be cooking this in a cut off propane bottle, and over a wood fire. Yes it will be on a solid stand. So heat will probably get very high. Propane is very cost prohibitive in the woods. Thanks for any ideas and help.

[Winger Ed.]

The Copper won't melt into the Lead in any noticeable amount.
As the Lead begins to melt, keep stirring & poking at it, and the Copper will float right out.

It may or may not work, but you might try to split the cable with a hatchet.

[Sasquatch-1]

The Copper won't melt into the Lead in any noticeable amount.
As the Lead begins to melt, keep stirring & poking at it, and the Copper will float right out.


+1 on this. Just flux a few times with candle wax and old motor oil and you should come up with clean ingots. This should be pretty soft lead.

[remy3424]

What Ed said about the copper. You have it in short sections now (twice the length might have been ideal), try scoring it around in the center of the length with a hand pruner (for tree branches), then bend it, it will break clean there and pull it apart. Then grab the wires and pull out of the remaining side. This works great when the cable is not kinked or crushed. I have sold that copper to the recycler, once they paid great (I had hundreds of pounds) and the last time the price was very little...it seems to depend on the mood of whoever is doing the buying on a given day. What I have acquire is usually from the 50s (the older stuff anyway will have a ribbon inside with the date of manufacture) and had paper insulation, the newer stuff has plastic insulation, not sure it that matters to the recyclers. It is pretty soft, blend with WWs to stretch them. Might be fine as is if PCing in 45ACP. Always a good find.

[Sasquatch-1]

I would also be very careful about adding this to liquid lead. Any moisture could be disastrous.

Many years ago, I was on the receiving end of a steam explosion and was lucky only a very small piece of lead hit me just under the eye.

[bosterr]

Sit the pieces in your smelting pot and melt a groove lengthwise with a propane torch.

[Rapier]

Have a few pounds of lead sheeting from underground cables, much larger diameter than what you are working with. Of the normal materials you run into when melting lead, it is heavier than the rest, so pretty much everything else will separate and float on the top of the pot when fluxed.
You will have a mess in the pot, if you do not remove the insulation from the wire.
Normally lead sheeting is almost pure lead. I usually save my sheeting for conical hollow cavity BP bullets. The conical hollow cavity is designed for the skirt to expand, to seal, and fit the barrel lands and grooves.
That wood fire heat is going to be almost uncontrollable and will cause any combustible impurities to catch fire. A concentrated charcoal fire with a reversed vacuum cleaner, would be more controllable.

[gunther]

A picture of your find would help make suggestions more useful. However, a discarded knife set lengthwise on the 6 inch cable piece and hammered through it would take these apart. Might take a day or two, but would be a lot better than inhaling plastic fumes.

[15meter]

Try pulling out just a couple of strands at a time, they won't pull hard. After a dozen or two strands come out the rest will almost fall out.

You may want to rethink melting them down as a whole. Here in Michigan, I believe it is illegal to sell burnt wiring.

State did that to discourage open burning of wiring to remove the sheathing.

Upside of not melting it whole you'll have much cleaner lead to deal with.

And the insulated copper wire is probably worth a buck a pound. It is around here anyway.

[rancher1913]

i had the same thing, just dump it in the pot, the copper will float to the top and the plastic/rubber will burn of. makes a lot of smoke but gives good softish lead

[ChuckO]

You might want to consider the fuel costs of heating up the entire cable to remove the lead. It takes a lot of propane to heat the copper and plastic just to let it cool again.

I have used a small pneumatic chisel to open up wire sheathing a couple of times, but it was on larger diameter cable.

[Rickf1985]

Unless this stuff is different from what I had 50 years ago you can usually grab one or two wires with pliers and pull them out from the end. Then a few more and after that it will come out in bundles. Once done all that is left is the paper liner which makes great flux. The wires make fantastic wraps for tying up all kinds of things in the garage.

[lightman]

Thats a nice score! You should be able to pull the copper out of the sheathing. Most scrap places will buy the insulated wire but pay less than bare wire. If you melt it all together you shouldn't have any copper get into the lead but be prepared for lots of smoke. The wire will probably have some type of jell substance on it which will also add to the smoke.

Cable sheathing is considered to be soft lead. The stuff that I have tested to be 98-98.5% lead.

[Keyman]

I will try the nick and fold idea today, and pull a few strands also. Yes this lead is going to have water inside with the wire, and I will do a melt from a cold pot each time.
I had carpel tunnel surgery, the new minimalist type, and was not a great outcome. Had the other hand done,with the long slash, and it is not to bad. Advise has been do not do what makes it hurt. HA HA!! The life style I have chosen is not easy, but makes me happy.

[Winger Ed.]

You might be able to boil off the water if you lay a grate or rack over the top of the pot.
Put the cable pieces on top as you're melting other chunks of it inside the pot to 'pre-heat' them.

[Glwenzl]

I have a bunch of electrical copper wire that is lead coated. Thinking the next time I light up my oven (full sized kitchen propane oven in my shop) I will throw it in there on a rack with a cookie sheet underneath it to see how little I actually get.

[ulav8r]

Cut up 50+ feet last spring. Used an old butcher knife and a dead blow plastic mallet. The first roll I cut to about 4" length and tried splitting the length. Did not work too well. Then used needle nose pliers to pull the wire out, 2 or 3 at a time till I got 15-20 out and then I could get quite a few more at a time. On the next roll I cut a few sections about 8 inches long and pulled the wire the same way, was still very slow. I was using the dead blow hammer to drive the butcher knife through the wire. About three blows would sever the cable.

At that point I still had about 3 1/2 rolls and decided to try another way. I cut the cable into about 16 inch sections, unless there were bad kinks. I would make a section longer or shorter to cut at a kink. Then I would straighten the sections so they would roll easily. About 4 inches from the end I would put the knife across the cable at a 90° angle, press down on the knife and rolled the cable 360° with the edge of the knife. That would cut through the lead but not the copper. Then I would pull the lead off. Do it again, and the again at the other end. This was by far the fastest way that I tried. A few of the sections had enough dents that I wad unable to pull the lead off so I set them aside. After doing what I could, I put the dented sections on a flat surface and used the dead blow to flatten them a bit, then rotated 90° and flattened again. Then I started rolling and tapping back to round. Once I had them straight and round, I was able to remove the lead 3-4 inches at a time.

[imashooter2]

Use a hatchet to split the sheathing. It will be well worth your time. Trying to melt the lead from around the copper and plastic will be a nightmare.

[gwpercle]

Pulling the copper wire out of 6" sections should not be that hard ... melting the lead , copper wire and plastic insulation will be a mess ... removing the copper wires from the melted lead will be tedious, you can't just scoop them up ... pick up each wire one at a time ...no
Pull out as much of the copper as you can from the short sections ...will be less work and smoke in long run . Inhaling smoke from burning plastic can't be good for the lungs !!!
Split one end with a hatchet to get to wires and get the pulling started , wrap a wire end around a screwdriver (or any tool) to help you pull on the wire ...you get one out and the rest will follow easily .
Gary

[45DUDE]

I have a small roll<100ft>and I tried to melt a little and rolled it back up. When I run out I may use it. I thought about cutting into 6" strips with bolt cutters and using the 12lb pot.

[remy3424]

I know others have also used bypass pruners of the little stuff the poster has, just score around the center of the short pieces with the pruner (it will also be used to cut to length), break, pull one side off and then grab the wires and pull out of the remaining sheathing...no need to make this any harder than it needs to be. The big 2-3" cables use a pneumatic air hammer with a body cutter bit or whatever they are called and cut to length with a sharp axe and a big swing, trying to pull the wires from those takes more of a man than I am today. Have done way over 1000 pounds of phone cable...almost all I have been given, have paper, not plastic insulation on the phone wires. A splice or 2 have had some plastic insulated wires. Better chance of the recycler buying the copper if it hasn't been burnt.

[Keyman]

Well I took some time today and gave the different ideas a try. Boy oh boy this stuff is old and a pain. A lot of water has gotten inside. The phone wires looked like they were fabric wrapped. No date ribbon inside. I nicked and bent a piece and it did crack all the way around. That wire that had fabric on it was hard to pull. Then when I grabbed another piece it was different. There was a solid copper single wire in the middle about 16 guage, and coated with some type of rubber. It did not want to pull. I know it might take awhile, but I am going to melt this over a wood fire. I will have to wait for 4 or 5 more weeks to see the ground and do this. There is still 4 feet of snow here, and we do not plow our yard, just pack down with snowshoes or the iron dog. (snogo, or snow machine)

[obssd1958]

My experience has been different. I collected a couple hundred pounds of lead sheathed telephone wire, and started out trying to split the lead and pull the wire. Very difficult and time consuming. So I decide to just melt it all, flux and scoop off the copper wire. Started out with just a couple of small pieces, and after fluxing, watched the small copper wires dissolve into the mix. There was quite a bit of crud to skim off the top - but none of it was copper wire.
I did this on a turkey fryer, but I don't think the alloy ever got hot enough to melt copper.
I wish I could explain it, but I can't.

[Keyman]

My experience has been different. I collected a couple hundred pounds of lead sheathed telephone wire, and started out trying to split the lead and pull the wire. Very difficult and time consuming. So I decide to just melt it all, flux and scoop off the copper wire. Started out with just a couple of small pieces, and after fluxing, watched the small copper wires dissolve into the mix. There was quite a bit of crud to skim off the top - but none of it was copper wire.
I did this on a turkey fryer, but I don't think the alloy ever got hot enough to melt copper.
I wish I could explain it, but I can't.



So that is part of my question, if the copper went into the soft lead, did the lead then become hard? If so how hard, and did you have problems casting? Keyman

[Rickf1985]

So that is part of my question, if the copper went into the soft lead, did the lead then become hard? If so how hard, and did you have problems casting? Keyman

Oh Boy, I can see where this is headed. :neutral: You might want to take a gander at this thread about the copper bit. https://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?86682-Alloying-Copper-into-Lead-Tin
My personal opinion on copper is that even if you do manage to dissolve some into the lead you will never be able to be consistent with the alloy. And copper supposedly makes lead tougher, not harder. Unless you have your own personal XRF tester to use wheneve you like it is not worth it since you will never know what you have.

[Keyman]

Tougher lead I can deal with. I had a phone call from the people that sell XRF Testers, as I sent them an email, and boy oh boy they are proud of those devices. I can see that I could test my toxic spices and other food items. Might be a great way to go on a diet with testing all you eat first. I read some of that link above, and do not think copper will be my big worry. Toxic fumes will want to get me first, while doing the first melt. Keyman

[GregLaROCHE]

You can buy hook blades for utility knives. They are used a lot buy roofers to cut asbestos shingles. Attach one end of the cable to something solid and then you can use both hands to split the lead down the full length.

You should consider selling the copper if it’s worth your while.

[fjrdoc]

My father worked for the phone company many years ago. Most of the lead that I have for casting was from lead encased wires. My dad showed me how to use a hatchet and a hammer to cut through the outer layer of lead. It can then be peeled open and the wiring removed. I still have some lead in my stockpile from when he was still alive.

[Bmi48219]

You can buy hook blades for utility knives. They are used a lot buy roofers to cut asbestos shingles. Attach one end of the cable to something solid and then you can use both hands to split the lead down the full length..

If you have a piece of wood with a slot cut into it the depth and width of the cable couldn’t you inset a razor knife blade so the sharp edge protrudes into the slot far enough to cut through the jacket material. Clamp another piece of wood over the wire trough to keep it down on the blade and pull the wire through.

[Sasquatch-1]

I would say get an old Stainless steel or cast-iron frying pan, put it in your fire and lay the cable on the frying pan like you are browning sausage. Take the cable out and let it cool and then peel back the lead casing. (You could do this with a couple of pliers or screwdrivers to give you leverage.) This way you can catch the lead and also not have to worry too much about the moisture. I would dump the lead into another melting pot so I would not get a deep accumulation in the pan. You did say you already had it cut in short lengths.

[Mike W1]

As a splicer I opened a lot of cables over 30+ years. The smaller lead sheathed ones are easy. Cut into smaller sections and cut a score around the diameter of the cable in the middle. Then bend it back and forth and it'll break the sheath. Slide and pull the stuff out. The larger ones are most easily opened up with an air chisel. You don't even have to anchor one end. Just hold the blade at an angle to the sheath and have at it. I always salvaged the copper so tied a knot and threw it on the pile and lit things up. Takes long to tell than to do it. We had a knife and hammer to do it and I'm pretty sure it beat the ax/hammer thing by far. Air chisel is superior to both!

[Keyman]

Will try air chisel as I have one. Thanks all for great ideas.

[15meter]

Late as usual, if you're not aware there's an air hammer chisel specifically for ripping seams.

Two non-cutting "fingers" ride on the surface with a cutting blade at 90 degrees.

If the cable is left long, as in longer the better for weight so you don't push the cable instead of cutting, it will work better.

It's surprising how fast you can walk down a piece of cable with an air hammer.

[steveu]

FWIW,
I used a nail bar and a 2lb shop hammer to split the cable and separate it from the copper wire. Worked well for me, better than a chisel.

[gwpercle]

I use a rather sharp old meat cleaver and small hammer to cut a slit in the sheathing ...
then pliars / channel locks or vice grips to peel the lead off , pullthe wires out .
Much easier to smelt without all the copper wire and insulation in there .

The plairs and vice grips help get things apart .
Gary

[Ohio Rusty]

Nice score !! The lead covering the paper covered copperwires is super soft and great !!I used a hammer and sharp chisel and cut the lead down the whole length. Then I was able to easily open the slit with a screw driver and remove the copper wire. I got good money for the wire at the recycler. The lead is the best I have found for muzzleloading roundball.
Ohio Rusty ><>

[Keyman]

Well I got to work last summer 2023, and filled a topless 30 pound propane bottle with cut lead and cable, and covered it with a piece of metal to keep the heat in. I got a wood fire going, and did it smoke. I kept fluxing and scraping crud and wire off the top after the fire inside died down. I fluxed with spruce saw dust, and even tossed in some spruce pitch. I ended up with 90 pound of lead, and copper wire with no plastic that will go to the scrap yard. I did two melts to get all 15 gallons done.

Keyman

[Barry54]

Well I got to work last summer 2023, and filled a topless 30 pound propane bottle with cut lead and cable, and covered it with a piece of metal to keep the heat in. I got a wood fire going, and did it smoke. I kept fluxing and scraping crud and wire off the top after the fire inside died down. I fluxed with spruce saw dust, and even tossed in some spruce pitch. I ended up with 90 pound of lead, and copper wire with no plastic that will go to the scrap yard. I did two melts to get all 15 gallons done.

Keyman

Congratulations!

I’ve got a similar mess to process. I turned about 60 lbs into ingots last month.

[Rickf1985]

Well I got to work last summer 2023, and filled a topless 30 pound propane bottle with cut lead and cable, and covered it with a piece of metal to keep the heat in. I got a wood fire going, and did it smoke. I kept fluxing and scraping crud and wire off the top after the fire inside died down. I fluxed with spruce saw dust, and even tossed in some spruce pitch. I ended up with 90 pound of lead, and copper wire with no plastic that will go to the scrap yard. I did two melts to get all 15 gallons done.

Keyman

You must live in a wide open area! If I tried that here the fire company would show up in very short order.

[Bill M]

I used to remove the wire before melting, but the last I did, I just fed the lead into the pot while pulling the wire out. Easy enough with welding gloves!

[lightman]

Glad to hear that you got it melted.

[Piłsudski]

I am reminded of my career of years ago. A cable splicer supplied me with splices, which are 6" to 8" in diameter and maybe 18" to 24" long. Al of the wire used in lead cable days is fabric insulated.

I cut the sheath with a hammer and chisel. It is very soft lead.

My work included a lot of soldering. The soldering iron holders were full of clumps of solder, since nobody had any reason for getting the solder out. It was even more of a reflex than a practice to tin a tip that had been sitting and tap the iron on the holder. My early forays into casting for 45 Auto and 38 Spl were from this source, cable splices mixed with solder clumps. I still have two or three clumps of solder in the garage.

[mike salyards]

I just used the small angle grinder with an old diamond blade on it ran it up the side spread it apart with a screwdriver and pulled the cables out I was given a couple 1000 lbs of lead and all I had to do was return the copper cable to the owner