value of pure lead?

[par0thead151]

how much does pure lead go for?
i have a handle on a local source for pure lead, used in construction i assume in a medical building with Xrays.
it is in between plywood and will need to be pried out or burn the wood...
he wants 25 cents a pound. is this a good deal?
i cast for 45 and 9mm, and possibly buckshot and slugs. can i use this lead for slugs and buckshot?
i have a good stash of WW, but want more lead as i know the day of cheap lead is coming to a close...

is this a deal i should not pass up on, or not worth the hassle?
thanks

[briang]

Get all the lead you can while you can, it's not gonna be around forever. You can always trade or sell it latter

[par0thead151]

yes but i would prefer to buy stuff i can use, instead of relying on bartering it.
my budget is limited or i would be buying it as 25 cents a pound is not that bad, as it is pure...
only wood to deal with, not zinc or other crud that WW's have

[sheepdog]

Is that 25 cents a pound with or without the wood? I get alot of WW free but my local scrap yard buys lead at 15 cents a pound and sells at 50. I doubt he can sell that to the scrap yard for more then 5 cents a pound with the wood attached so I'd make him and offer with that explanation. and if they won't take it then he can't just dump it. Either its go tto be processed or he has to pay for its disposal.

Right now lead is plentiful and money is hard to come by. I would bet with the above told he might bite on 5 cents/lb. Best luck on a deal :)

[par0thead151]

i just emailed him offering 5 cents a pound.
would this be bad to cast buckshot out of?

[par0thead151]

"Hello, I've got @ 800 lbs. of lead I'd like to get rid of. I've already taken some of it to Miller compressing and they gave me 38 cents a lb. Here's the deal, the lead is the center layer of three quarter inch plywood. The layer of pure lead being around a quarter of an inch thick. I busted the wood off one sheet that's around three by four feet and weighs 105 lbs. The rest is still in the plywood. I took one small sheet to a friends back yard bonfire and the lead melted out before the wood started on fire. If this is something you could use please call me,"
the info he gave me on the lead
isn't pure lead worth more than WW??

[Ole]

Pure lead might be worth more to a few bullet casters, but I think most would prefer working with a WW alloy.

[opentop]

at .25 per pound, I'd buy it if I was you!

[par0thead151]

at .25 per pound, I'd buy it if I was you!

is that a hellov a deal, or just a somewhat fair/good buy?
im finding scrap WW at a few scrap yards(just called 15 of them in the milwaukee area) and i have a handle on one that will sell for 20 cents a pound and another at 25 cents a pound.

im still mulling over the pure lead as that has got to have some value to casting.

[Gunslinger]

Look at it this way: 1 lbs of lead will yield approx. 50 9mm boolits. Ask yourself if 25 cents is a lot to pay for 50 boolits :)

I'd buy it in a heart beat eveugh I have a lot of lead lying around.

And no it is not an unreasonable price.

[sheepdog]

Look at it this way: 1 lbs of lead will yield approx. 50 9mm boolits. Ask yourself if 25 cents is a lot to pay for 50 boolits :)

True but then there your time stripping the wood, melting down the lead, then melting it in your pour pot later, lube, equipment. I paid $25 for an overflowing 5 gallon bucket of big trunk WWs last week. All I could think about is the buckets of free ones I have been getting.

I'd do 25 cent a pound if he splits it clean for you. Its decent right now but not great. 25 pure stripped would be a good deal.

[par0thead151]

im young and dont mind the labor, i just like to get very good deals, or free lead.
have yet to get any free lead though... :-(
i almost gave up on wanting to cast when scrap yards were asking 1.00 to 1.50 a pound of WW to buy from them.
couple that with tire shops not giving me the time of day(hell they still dont, too many large chains where i live)
i have 1500# of WW on hand(not smelted yet), so i am not starving for lead by any means. just would like a life time supply for casting 9mm, 45, buckshot and 1oz slugs, and possibly 308 for my 1919 and mg42

[Gunslinger]

True but then there your time stripping the wood, melting down the lead, then melting it in your pour pot later, lube, equipment. I paid $25 for an overflowing 5 gallon bucket of big trunk WWs last week. All I could think about is the buckets of free ones I have been getting.

I'd do 25 cent a pound if he splits it clean for you. Its decent right now but not great. 25 pure stripped would be a good deal.

I know there is a lot of labour involved, especially in this case. And you really do have to see it as a hobby and not just a means of saving money! I think maybe when you've been casting for decades it isn't just as fun as in the beginning. But I'm not here yet... not at all :roll:

[par0thead151]

I know there is a lot of labour involved, especially in this case. And you really do have to see it as a hobby and not just a means of saving money! I think maybe when you've been casting for decades it isn't just as fun as in the beginning. But I'm not here yet... not at all :roll:

ooh, i enjoy it very much. only have cast a couple hundred, but i am HOOKED... waiting on my 6 cav handles so i can go full tile on production.
if i think smelting is fun, casting bullets is even better. cheap reloading components is just the icing on the cake.
im just not that comfortable mixing my own alloys just yet, which would be required for this pure lead.
im thinking i probably should just funnel my money into the wheel weights, even though i loose 10-20% of the net weight to clips and scrap. i suppose the 25 cents a pound is not a half bad price since the majority of the weight is indeed lead.

[sheepdog]

25 isn't bad. Certainly if you have the money buy it. For muzzleloaders pure lead is ideal as its easy to put stuff in an alloy, tough to pull it out. But for boolits I been wanting to buy alloys with low lead (high in tin, antimony, and arsenic) as much as possible. Look at the price and pain of adding pure tin and antimony and you'll see why.
If you're talking low pressure loads and get your sizing right pure lead is great. Its even great to cut with wheel weight but for me, thinking about water hardening my cast, I want those other metals in my alloy in wheel weight or greater percentages.

[Gunslinger]

ooh, i enjoy it very much. only have cast a couple hundred, but i am HOOKED... waiting on my 6 cav handles so i can go full tile on production.
if i think smelting is fun, casting bullets is even better. cheap reloading components is just the icing on the cake.
im just not that comfortable mixing my own alloys just yet, which would be required for this pure lead.
im thinking i probably should just funnel my money into the wheel weights, even though i loose 10-20% of the net weight to clips and scrap. i suppose the 25 cents a pound is not a half bad price since the majority of the weight is indeed lead.


I know IT'S GREAT ISN'T IT :-D???? I love it too... I think about smelting and casting every day, I don't think I've ever looked forward to summer this much... maybe I'm a sissy but I don't want to smelt or cast when it's windy outside.

Why are you not comfortable mixing your own alloys? If your ingredients are cleaned and cast into ingots it's easy to figure out how to mix it. Just read a little on the site and try mixing a small batch and casting it into boolits. Just do yourself a favour and write down what your alloy consists of, what and how much powder etc was used and what the result was.

[troy_mclure]

the local scrap yard here wants .60 cents per lb, thats $300 per 500lb.

thats only 7500 boolits for my 45/70.

after tin, antimony, etc.. it will be closer to .90 cents a lb.


and all the wheel shops in town are already spoken for by a batery company.

[inuhbad]

You better buy it before I DO!

Locally in my area, lead is running around $0.50 per pound... Buy as much as you can, and don't look back (unless the guy has more to sell later)! ;)

At $0.50/pound, locally in my area, that's a good deal! So, $0.25 is a GREAT deal in my opinion!

The guy is right though. Many scrap/recycling centers will pay around $0.35 to $0.38 per pound to buy up the lead, then they'll turn around & sell it for closer to $0.50 per pound or more!

[Cherokee]

Scrap yards gotta make money so I don't have a problem with reasonable markup. But if you can get it cheaper at the source - do it !!

[par0thead151]

wow, guess im lucky with my local scrap yards, 20 cents to 25 cents a pound at the reasonable places for scrap WW lead.

[outdoorfan]

Found a small scrap yard the other day in the next town 20 miles away. The people running it reminded me of the hillbillys, which are the kind of people I prefer to buy lead from anyway. Anyway, they were nice people, and they were only charging .10 for pure and even less for ww's. Got myself a couple hundred pounds of it.

Most other places in the area want .50 or more per pound. Yuck!

[Jon]

I have some BP guns and would love to have some pure lead. WW is great but it's hard to find pure.

[Daniel964]

How can you tell whats pure? I got some WW with the clips. WW that are stick on. Lead pipe and sheet lead that looks like it came off a roof. As well as other odds and ends that I don't know what they are but they are lead. I want to smelt the pure stuff into seperate ingots.

[booboo1000]

Pure lead might be worth more to a few bullet casters, but I think most would prefer working with a WW alloy.

It depends on what they are shooting, for B/P shooters, pure lead is the real thing.