Smelting "Lead" from range sweepings

[rsrocket1]

I just bought a hundred pounds of "range lead" from a local indoor pistol range and it seems like most of the metal is in the form of lead dust.
I bought a cast iron pot and propane turkey fryer to smelt it. The lead is in 5 gallon buckets all sealed up to ensure no dust gets loose until I'm ready to smelt it.

Has anyone else done this regularly and is it worth it? In the past, I have scrounged lead from wheel weights, sheet lead, isotope containers and most often reclaimed shot from the trap and skeet club I was a member of but have since moved.

I have done the whole fluxing, scooping and ingot making in the past, but since most of the lead was pretty clean, I simply did it in my Lee 4-20 bottom pour pot and came out none the worst for wear by doing it. I got the new equipment because this may not be as clean although the lead does not have rubber pieces embedded in it and there is no other contamination due to it being in an indoor setting.

Of course I'll be doing this in my backyard over a hard surface with all the heat and breathing protective gear (been casting over a decade) and doing everything needed to avoid the tinsel fairy and ladling the lead into ingot molds and scooping the jackets out.

Right now, the last chance I had of buying reclaimed shot was $1.40/#, new shot is over $2.40/# and this stuff was $1/#. I know I'll get less lead than 100# but so long as it's more than 50 pounds worth, it's about as good as I can get.

[Idz]

If its truly floor sweepings you won't find much lead in it. If its from a bullet trap/ impact area you can get up to about 70% yield. I melt the scrap from our clubs trap in a cut in half 20# propane tank and get about 60% yield. I melt it in a homemade furnace with a lid on the pot so the carbon stuff in the pot creates a carbon monoxide reducing atmosphere which prevents the lead dust from oxidizing.

[centershot]

As Idz has said, your yield will probably be significantly less than the 100 pounds you started with, This drives the price per pound up considerably. Add to that the cost of propane and your time. Now you're pushing $2 per pound. Then there's the mess.......no matter how careful you are, there's still a mess to contend with. The bottom line is......well, the bottom line! You may find, as I did, that working with scrap metal, of unknown alloys, is as much money out-of-pocket as buying clean metal from a vendor such as Roto-Metals or Rochester Lead Works. Be honest with yourself - assess your time involved, gasoline spent searching and hauling all that scrap, the propane used. It adds up quickly.

[JimB..]

If it’s really in 5 gal buckets then there can’t be much lead in it. One 5 gal bucket of lead would be several hundred pounds.

[rsrocket1]

Thanks for the answers. The stuff is from their bullet traps although I don't know how they trap it. Perhaps a metal plate at the back of the trap causes the bullets to shatter and turn into tiny bits and dust. I've seen a number of steel plate shots that cause bullets to turn to "dust".

My favorite:


https://youtu.be/QfDoQwIAaXg


I have half of the hundred pounds in each of 2 5 gallon buckets. I weighed the stuff out myself with the owner of the range (a very nice 83 year old gentleman). He does have someone come in and smelt some of the scrap into ingots but charges $3/# for that stuff. I guess I'll simply have to melt it and weigh the yield to find out myself.

[imashooter2]

This is what steel backstop indoor range scrap looks like. I’ve gotten it from 3 or 4 ranges. All the same although some was heavily oiled to keep down dust.

http://www.imashooter2.com/pictures/scrap600.jpg

ETA: I’d expect sweepings to be 90%+ concrete dust and dirt.

[redhawk0]

My local gun club gave me 350lbs in 5 - 5gallon pails. It was free to haul it up out of the basement and take it. I ended up with 300+ lbs of clean range lead after melting it all down.

It is great for mixing in an alloy...but a bit soft to cast as it. Most of what I got was 38's (jacketed with soft core) and 22's to melt so it did have a high Arsenic content.

It does mix well with other "scrounges" like WW and plumbers lead. It can make great boolits if you get it very clean. Good luck with it.

redhawk

[Bigslug]

A word of caution: If it's truly "floor sweepings" from an indoor range, there's probably a good bit of unburned powder in it.

[G W Wade]

Bigslug nailed it. Lots of unburned powder from sweeping the range floor. GW

[Charlie Horse]

I have smelted a good bit of backstop lead. One source was lead that hit an angled plate then was deflected down into sand. That lead was fairly easy gather. I made a basket out of 1/4" hardware cloth. You put the lead in the basket and hose it down to clean off the dust. Dry it, and melt it. That helped greatly with the dust problem.
Another source was caked lead build-up from an indoor range with a lot of wood and some plastic contaminant in it from people shooting wood blocks and bowling pins. That stuff was nasty. The lead bits were too small to pre-clean with water like I did the other stuff. I'd fill a good-sized sauce pan with it and melt it over the turkey fryer. It gave off clouds of smoke. I ended up with about 1/5 the volume of lead compared to the stuff I started with. There was LOTS of dross.

I am VERY concerned about lead dust. It's the reason I won't tumble cases. If you can start with dust-free lead, I feel scrounged range scrap is worth it. If it's dusty when you move it/scoop it, or you end up with a lot of dross, then I think you are exposing yourself and the environment to excess lead.

You do you, but if I can't get fairly clean lead to begin with, or if I can't wash the dust off before processing, I will pass on the source.

My club has a maintenance day 1/week. I plan to go on that day and pick lead out of the berm - in the future, when I need more lead. That stuff should be easy to hose down with water, pre-smelting.

[truckjohn]

I recommend melting this down over a found-wood fire rather than propane. Last batch I did over propane cost me an entire bbq bottle for like 50# of the stuff. No thanks. After that, I just built a fire out of dead limbs and went from there. There's generally a lot of trash in it that burns off/smokes/etc.

Like the others, you may want to pre-burn it to get rid of any unburned powder rather than heaping a chinese dutch oven full and clunking the lid on.

[Charlie Horse]

Someone asked about my practice of washing the lead before melting. My club has water at the range. That ground is already contaminated, and that is where the lead is coming from. Also, most of what I wash off is plain-old dust/dirt. Not pulverized lead. But I don't want any powder in the air when I'm working with lead. If I remove it before melting that is that much less dross I'm exposed to during the skimming process.

[GregLaROCHE]

Lead dust is worthless. I’ve collected lead from the cement floor of my club’s indoor range. I used to sweep the floor clean. I ended up throwing away almost a third of it in the dross. I once tried melting the dross because it was so heavy. I did get about ten percent more, but not worth the effort and propane. The club has asked me if I want to take some more. Now with the cost of Propane, I’m not so excited. I still have a good stash left. If I do, this time I will run it through a wire screen when I am there and only take a minimum size. Less to carry and less to pay in propane.

[truckjohn]

Honestly, clubs with a lot of that lead dust stuff would do well to contact a smelter and sell direct.

[rsrocket1]

Well, I finally had a free Saturday morning to smelt the stuff. I bought a cast iron dutch oven at Wally world and a $40 propane turkey fryer at Cabelas a month ago and scrounged the thrift stores for some ladels, slotted spoons and 2-3 quart pots to collect the jackets and dross.

This is what the stuff looked like. Tons of jackets, lots of small lead bits and I'm quite sure the gray stuff is powderized lead from the bullets shattering on impact.

https://images2.imgbox.com/d0/54/5MnMt2n3_o.jpeg

Here's the stuff in the dutch oven. Pretty much half of the "100 pounds" fit in the pot after a couple of meltings and lots of scooping of jackets.

https://images2.imgbox.com/f6/ef/SNxoEG7C_o.jpeg

After a lot of scooping of jackets and scooping of "other dust", ladling the lead into the Lyman molds was pretty uneventful.

https://images2.imgbox.com/e2/02/nUKSJxS0_o.jpeg

Total yield:
85 pounds of ingots
34 pounds of jackets and "other powder"

I tried reducing the powder in case it was tin oxide by using parafin and pieces of wood, covering the dutch oven and letting it run hot in order to separate the oxygen from the oxides and some of the powder did go back into the liquid alloy, but not all.

The leftovers was probably 10 pounds of copper/brass jackets and 24 pounds of the powder. I know there was metallic lead in the stuff, but it was not worth my time to try to recover every ounce.

This means the range actually gave me about 120 pounds for $100 so the cost was
$1.17/pound but the percentage was close to what some of you predicted which was 71% which would have made the lead $1.40/pound. This is exactly what my old trap and skeet range was recently selling at $35/25 pounds for reclaimed shot. I missed out on buying a couple hundred pounds on my final opportunity because it was pouring rain and the range was close. Unfortunately that source is no longer viable as I now live 1800 miles from that range.

If there are no other sources of lead for $2/# or less, I would continue to do this but it is not fun unless I can put together a setup to do everything standing or sitting and not squatting on the ground. Plus even with all the PPE and precautions, I don't like the fact that lead dust can spread around my backyard nor would I want to do this in windy or hot conditions.

Total time from taking the stuff out to getting everything cleaned up was four hours.

[dondiego]

Can you sell the copper jackets to a scrap dealer? That would lower you per pound lead cost.

[imashooter2]

Put the fryer up on blocks. You can build them up pretty stable, and only bend slightly while ladling.

ETA: the dust is what I would have called floor sweepings. Those chunks and splatters are pretty much what I got from the backstop troughs.

Call around before you put any work into cleaning up the jackets. Some get copper prices for them, but the yards around here won’t touch them.

[rsrocket1]

Put the fryer up on blocks. You can build them up pretty stable, and only bend slightly while ladling.

ETA: the dust is what I would have called floor sweepings. Those chunks and splatters are pretty much what I got from the backstop troughs.

Call around before you put any work into cleaning up the jackets. Some get copper prices for them, but the yards around here won’t touch them.


Thanks for the advice. I weighed the jackets by themselves and it was a little over 16 pounds. If I can trade it to a metal recycler along with all my spent primers and smashed scrap brass cases for his scrap lead, it would be worthwhile.

[Dusty Bannister]

Be sure to run a strong magnet over the material you will be taking to the scrap dealer. Any metal (Steel jackets with brass plate) will result in refusal or severe reduction in scrap price.

[Bmi48219]

Honestly, clubs with a lot of that lead dust stuff would do well to contact a smelter and sell direct.

The local indoor range sell the range pickup brass to one commercial outfit. Another buys the barrels of range lead / jackets that come out of the trap auger system. They have to pay to get rid of the lead dust that comes out of the trap augers and air filtration system.

[durango]

Interesting thread--enough so, that I have to join in. I have melted and sold (on this site) a few tons of lead from many sources and most of my experience follows what has been said here. I will comment on two subjects that are not in line with my findings--OK--three. The third is that indoor ranges ARE NOT the best places to buy lead and here are the reasons. #1-lead dust, or as I call it-"mystery dust". Recovered in dross, this stuff is of quantities great enough to be a concern with health, disposal, and financial loss. It is heavy, so you're paying good money for a product that will not be recovered in the final sale price. I've offered it to several scrap yards and been turned away every time--some have been very professional recyclers and others are kind of 'junk yard dogs'.
So, what is it? I sent a sample to BNE and his findings came back as very high lead content--80-90% as I remember. I tried to melt some by itself and still no molten lead, I called several powder manufacturers-no idea. Lately, I've read some comments about primers having something with lead in the name, so????. You can't melt it, can't sell it, so???
Lastly, the remainder of jackets--it aint copper or brass- put a magnet in it and it all jumps out of the bucket!!! Its steel with a copper wash!! You have to find an awful dumb scrapper to not catch that one!

[rsrocket1]

Interesting thread--enough so, that I have to join in. I have melted and sold (on this site) a few tons of lead from many sources and most of my experience follows what has been said here. I will comment on two subjects that are not in line with my findings--OK--three. The third is that indoor ranges ARE NOT the best places to buy lead and here are the reasons. #1-lead dust, or as I call it-"mystery dust". Recovered in dross, this stuff is of quantities great enough to be a concern with health, disposal, and financial loss. It is heavy, so you're paying good money for a product that will not be recovered in the final sale price. I've offered it to several scrap yards and been turned away every time--some have been very professional recyclers and others are kind of 'junk yard dogs'.
So, what is it? I sent a sample to BNE and his findings came back as very high lead content--80-90% as I remember. I tried to melt some by itself and still no molten lead, I called several powder manufacturers-no idea. Lately, I've read some comments about primers having something with lead in the name, so????. You can't melt it, can't sell it, so???


Primers are made with Lead Styphnate, at least "non-corrosive" primers are nowadays. "Corrosive" primers used Potassium Perchlorate which results in Potassium Chloride after the ignition. This is like Sodium Chloride in that it attracts water and results in rusted bores and other gun parts.

The Lead Styphnate turns into some other Lead salt compound after ignition so the dense lead is still there in the dust but may be in a compound with a much higher melting point or which simply doesn't melt. The 14 pounds of "dust" was very dense but not as dense as 14 pounds of lead so it was probably in the form of a lead salt.

The smelted lead cast up nicely into boolits. I ran the PID at 710 degrees which usually resulted in frosty bullets with my reclaimed shot lead but the lead content was probably higher in this case which made very shiny boolits. I cast about 40 pounds of Lee 429-200-RF bullets, powder coated them and shot them at anywhere from 980 fps to 1520 fps out of my "new" Ruger Super Redhawk 9.5" gun and they performed well.

first shots with a rest and off hand at 10 yards @ 1000 fps.
The first target on the left was 10mm shots I used as a warmup.
https://images2.imgbox.com/5f/d3/EyOMgnxO_o.jpeg

After adjusting the scope to 25 yards at 1520 fps (LabRadar average with 17.7g AA#7)
Nice kick but completely manageable with the heavy gun and long barrel.
Yes it's a totally impractical "handgun" but for plinking, it's a fun hand cannon.
https://images2.imgbox.com/00/d5/gDrRGucz_o.jpeg