Elkins45
05-09-2010, 08:26 PM
After a 10 year hiatus I'm back at casting with a vengeance. In returning from that long time off I discovered some things:
1) mud daubers had nested in some of my moulds
2) I didn't have nearly as much lead stored as i thought I did
3) The place I used to buy scrap lead has gone out of business
So now I want to cast but can't find lead. I did get a small amount of really dirty scrap from a recycling center one county over, but the big places either told me they don't fool with lead or they don't sell to the public. What to do?
Mostly out of frustration I put ads on Craigslist for the closest city (about two hours away) offering to buy used WW's. I got three responses. One of them didn't reply back, but two worked out really well. The first was a guy who had been running a car repair shop without a permit for years. He got ratted out and the city was shutting him down for running a scrapyard within the city limits. I gout just over 400 lbs of WW's (along with some scrap iron, valve stems, rust, etc. After smelting it yielded 156 full muffins (around 250 pounds I estimate) with not a single steel or zinc weight. Cost? $100 plus $10 for a gallon of Coleman fuel. Score!
The last one was the best of all. I just returned from picking up 365 pounds of WW that had already been smelted into Lyman ingots. I was overcome by curiosity and melted down some to try in a 32 cal. Lee rifle boolit mould. I'm happy to say it cast perfectly filled out and just beautiful shiny boolits. Cost? Again, $100 plus the gas to pick it up. SCORE!
I LOVE Craigslist (and not just because the hooker ads are so much fun to read)!:mrgreen:
1) mud daubers had nested in some of my moulds
2) I didn't have nearly as much lead stored as i thought I did
3) The place I used to buy scrap lead has gone out of business
So now I want to cast but can't find lead. I did get a small amount of really dirty scrap from a recycling center one county over, but the big places either told me they don't fool with lead or they don't sell to the public. What to do?
Mostly out of frustration I put ads on Craigslist for the closest city (about two hours away) offering to buy used WW's. I got three responses. One of them didn't reply back, but two worked out really well. The first was a guy who had been running a car repair shop without a permit for years. He got ratted out and the city was shutting him down for running a scrapyard within the city limits. I gout just over 400 lbs of WW's (along with some scrap iron, valve stems, rust, etc. After smelting it yielded 156 full muffins (around 250 pounds I estimate) with not a single steel or zinc weight. Cost? $100 plus $10 for a gallon of Coleman fuel. Score!
The last one was the best of all. I just returned from picking up 365 pounds of WW that had already been smelted into Lyman ingots. I was overcome by curiosity and melted down some to try in a 32 cal. Lee rifle boolit mould. I'm happy to say it cast perfectly filled out and just beautiful shiny boolits. Cost? Again, $100 plus the gas to pick it up. SCORE!
I LOVE Craigslist (and not just because the hooker ads are so much fun to read)!:mrgreen: