TRAP range lead / How to?

[gray wolf]

I can have access to a trap range, but it seems that the birds and the lead fall into a wooded area in the woods. How does a person harvest the lead ?

Sam

[Rockydog]

I would rake the very top layer of any solid leaves aside fairly aggressively to shake out any lead in that layer and then would skim the top 2 -3 " of soil and screen it through a 1/4" hardware cloth on a wheelbarrow, tossing the stuff on the screen and saving the stuff in the wheel barrow. Then I'd add water to the wheel barrow and stir the whole mix up. This should float a lot of the organic matter (sticks, leaf pieces, moss, etc) to the top. as a final step I'd put it on a piece of window screen and wash the dirt and sand through. You should be left with mostly shot. You could also build a simple sluice box and do it all in one step. RD

Simple sluice box plans. Sustitute the word lead whereever you see gold.

http://www.ehow.com/how_5954577_make-homemade-sluice-box.html

[Dframe]

A sluce box was my first thought as well.

[geargnasher]

I think Rockydog has the right idea. After shaking out and raking the top layer of leaves back you might only need the top 1/2" of soil, depending on how old the range is and how frequently it's used. Take that home in 5-gallon buckets in your pickup and you can just pour in the box.

Gear

[ReloaderFred]

Our club uses a blower arrangement to recover lead shot. It's a Rube Goldberg contraption that really works. It has a sloped chute where you shovel a thin layer of lead laden soil. As it rolls down the chute the material separates. When it gets to the end of the chute and falls off the edge, there is a blower directed to the edge. A bucket is directly under the lower edge of the chute. The lighter material is blown beyond the bucket and the shot falls into it. Works like a charm, but is only good for dry soil.

A washer was made for recovering shot when it's wet. It has a series of sieves and the material is washed over them and eventually you get shot, mixed with small amounts of other material. When it dries, it's then run over the blower and you get pure shot.

Hope this helps.

Fred

[Buckshot]

..............At our old range they had an outfit that'd come in every couple years and reclaim shot. They had a couple cement mixer looking deals rotating with water inside. I didn't pay them much attention as I could only see them as I traveled the distance from the street to the rifle/pistol line, but a couple times they'd have them tipped forward dumping dirty water out.

I suspect there was a trap door or some type of sealable opening on the back as I'd also seen them with the drums/containers tipped back while a stick/rake/hoe deal of some type was being used. I suspect it was the partially processed shot as they were raking into 5 gallon steel containers. Whatever else they did after that they must have done someplace else as those cement mixer things were all I ever saw.

...............Buckshot

[gray wolf]

Wow--I never thought of a sluice box--
Here in Maine we have many streams and rivers with fine gold in them.
I have a 5 foot sluice box and a Honda suction pump + all the riffles and special carpet to go in it. It's called a high banker. I am well organized when it comes to gold recovery.
Only problem here is that it is only a hobby for folks. You spend the day out with the family and perhaps find a little flake of gold. ( no profit )--BUT FUN.
So with all the ways you men have suggested plus the sluice box idea--I will see what I can do.
Thanks men

Sam

[stephen perry]

So Cal is heavy into trap and skeet shooting. As Buckshot stated there are several outfits that work the Ranges for lead. After an agreement is made with the Range about percentages of keep the dredging begins. Some Ranges dredge maybe every 6 months others like Inland, one of my rifle Ranges, might dredge every 10 years maybe in their case every 40 years. I have seen dredging go on for several months at a time 5 days a week. I can imagine any leased land from BLM or US Forestry has a dredge clause in the lease. I work for San Bernardino County, the EIR is a pricey item and if not conformed with could close down your Range until complied with.

As far as reclaming lead bullets or shot be sure to clean it and dry it out before smelting.

Stephen Perry
Angeles BR

[geargnasher]

So Cal is heavy into trap and skeet shooting. As Buckshot stated there are several outfits that work the ranges for lead. After an agreement is made with the club about percentages of keep the dredging begins. Some Ranges dredge maybe every 6 months others like Inland, one of my rifle ranges, might dredge every 10 years maybe in their case every 40 years. I have seen dredging go on for several months at a time 5 days a week. I can imagine any leased land from BLM or US Forestry has a dredge clause in the lease. I work for San Bernardino County, the EIR is a pricey item and if not conformrd with could close down your Range until complied with.

As far as reclaming lead bullets or shot be sure to clean it and dry it out before smelting.

Stephen Perry
Angeles BR

Soooo, how exactly does this rambling help GW in his efforts to reclaim some shot from the forest?

Gear

[Cord]

GW, it makes me wonder how large an area the shot is in, and if there
is enough metal in the ground to work anywhere, or just in spots.

Being a gold bug, you might have a metal detector to find concentrations,
or if you have a Garrett Gravity Trap pan, you could probably do some
dry-panning to sample around for good places to work- I bet if you just
shake off the lighter soil, the shot would collect in the traps.

[stephen perry]

I post to help, you might be a rambler. My comment to help, since the other methods described will work to extract the shot, was to clean it and dry it before smelting.

Stephen Perry
Angeles BR

[Tom-ADC]

Not much help but our club had a rig hooked to the back of a tractor that retrived the lead, then they sent it out where it was washed & tumbled in graphite, sold as reclaimed it shot every bit as well as new for skeet etc. Half the price of new.
I'd start with a metal detector and stake out the heavy area's

[scrapcan]

The first reclaimer I saw was built out of a John Deere Model 55 combine. They replaced the separators with different screens and put a grader blade on the front of the feed chute (where the header originally went. It cut a 6 foot path about 3 inches deep and did the separation as you went. It was quite the goldberg setup also, but it worked. It had a spot for a 55 gallon drum to collect shot. I wish I new what happened to that machine as it has been 15 years since the trap range in my home town has been reclaimed.

[jmsj]

ReloaderFred,
Do you have any pictures of your blower contraption? If you do, I would appreciate it if you could post it.

[ReloaderFred]

jmsj,

I'll get a picture of the machine, but I don't have a clue how to post a picture to a forum. I'm a shooter and reloader, not a computer guy at all. I'll let you know when I've got the picture and maybe we can figure out what to do with it.......

Fred

[gray wolf]

I do have the gold pans and the metal detector.
Problem # 1 for me is getting water to the site, many recovery methods require water, at least at some point. Second--I am not sure the metal detector will hit on non ferrous metal.
But Then again it works on gold and silver and it would be easy enough to test.
I will check into it more deeply, the range master is a shooting buddy.
I just don't see him that often.


Sam

[jmsj]

ReloaderFred,
I too am not a "computer guy". I took me a long time to figure out how to post pictures. Please don't sweat getting those pictures posted right away. There are some stickies on how to do this, but I had to get a friend to show me how to do this.
Many thanks, jmsj

[JIMinPHX]

There's a guy down in Tucson that is an expert at just that sort of thing. He'll come in & salvage the lead for your or he'll sell you the equipment to do it yourself. I bought a few thousand pounds of recovered shot off of him a couple of years ago. I was happy with my purchase. He's a straight shooter that does what he says he's going to do.

He used to show up on the board here for a little while, but I haven't seen him in a long time now. You can find him here - http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?t=50185

The spot price of lead is now about twice what it was when I made my purchase, so I don't know how good his current pricing might be.

[leadman]

Lead will set off a metal detector just fine.

If you are going to do any amount of recovery a sluice box has to be cleaned out way too often. I tried it. With the amount of lead in the dirt you are stopping every couple minutes to clean the sluice out.

A shallow pan like the metal one people put under their car in the garage to catch oil leaks works pretty good. This has about a 3/8" to 1/2" lip. Put the dirt on it and run a hose in it and the debris and dirt tend to wash over the lip. Have to control the water flow so it doesn't wash the shot away.