$80 per pail for ww?

[Albertapete]

I went to a couple of tire shops today and they told me the going rate is $75 to $80 per 5 gal pail !! I thought $50 was bad , I just said no thanks , I will do without at that price , actually for the amount of work involved in sorting out the junk and cleaning up the mess I don't think it is worth it if I have to buy them :|

[lwknight]

It would be cheaper to just buy lead at $1.20 per pound. You don't get much goodie out of random wws these days.

[frankenfab]

I paid $80 for the last 5 gal. bucket of WW I got, and it yielded 130# of useable alloy. I was mad to have to pay that much, but it seems it is a sign of the times.

We had better stock up on boolit metal of all kinds, wherever we can get it and primers as well. We could always make black powder if we had to.

[white eagle]

check out some of the lead dealers on this site good quality lead and better prices to boot

[BSkerj]

Last batch of WW I picked up totaled 82#. After smelting and making ingots I only had 46# of lead. I did not have to pay for them so it is still worth it, but I am now culling out alot more steel and zinc. Last year at this time I probably would have averaged close to 60 lbs. Luckily I have 2-55 gallon drums from last year and the year before I am sitting on. Currently I am smelting just what I bring home on a weekly basis and saving the drums for later if needed.

[Springfield]

Personally I wold just smelt those drums and get it over with. They will just get rustier and they take up lots less room as ingots. Plus you never know, you might lose your ability to smelt in the future, like you might move, or you get older and just can't, or you get a nosey neighbor who will complain. Ingots are most always better then raw scrap.

[lwknight]

Yes , nice clean pretty ingots are better than nasty old WWs in a rusty barrel.

[gunsablazin]

I'm getting about a 1/3-1/4 bucket a week from my local tire store, I give them $5 bucks per stop and a dozen doughnuts every month, just to keep 'em glad to see me. That works out to about $30 a bucket.:drinks:

[Bwana]

Did three buckets ($20 apiece) yesterday. Took three hours. Resulted in 248 lbs of corncob style ingots and 52 lbs of dross. Not bad.

[lylejb]

at $80 a bucket:

A bucket is about 150 lbs, give or take.

If you only lose a third to zinc , iron, clips, and junk that would be 100 lbs of usable lead.

that's .80 / lb IF you don't count propane , tools , equipment, and your time.

No thanks, there's plenty here in the swappin and selling section for $1 / lb or sometimes less, and that's ingots, shipped to your door.

I now some day this may no longer be true, but I don't think paying too much now will help that.

[thegreatdane]

I also smelted yesterday. Two 5gal buckets, after sorting, left 150lbs of ingot. It was about a 65% yeild.

Got 'em for free. Very nice.

That oughtta keep me shootin for a while... :Fire:

[fredj338]

I paid $80 for the last 5 gal. bucket of WW I got, and it yielded 130# of useable alloy. I was mad to have to pay that much, but it seems it is a sign of the times.

We had better stock up on boolit metal of all kinds, wherever we can get it and primers as well. We could always make black powder if we had to.
If you can actually gaurantee that, I would pay the $80. The last bucket I got out here was 35% non useable steel or zinc or other non lead weight.

[RP]

man that sucks the big one if i pay that much for wws i think i go crazy

[Dollar Bill]

I'm in the same position as AlbertaPete. The only thing that has saved me from buying ingots is the Range Officer I met a couple months ago. He's givng 10 buckets for free. He's not active casting and at his age, probably won't start up again. You guys still getting wheel weights @ $20 a bucket or so, count your blessings and stock up.

[Ajax]

WOW $80 that borders on rape. I was getting mine for $25 in virginia but i didnt get but one bucket before i moved and it wasn't full. I may just have to start buying mine from the S&S section here.

Andy

[bob208]

i just had 3 buckets given to me. got to go pick them up.

[Albertapete]

good news< I talked to my neighbor yesterday and he works at one of the car dealers in town . He said he takes wheel weights off every day and would save them for me[smilie=w:

[fredj338]

good news< I talked to my neighbor yesterday and he works at one of the car dealers in town . He said he takes wheel weights off every day and would save them for me[smilie=w:

Buy that man lunch or diner. Those sources are the ones you want to keep on your good side.

[4719dave]

Dam 80 buckssSSSSSS. I was whinning about 30.00 . I guess I better stop crying .Got lucky last week the RV shop I do door work for sold me a heaping bucket for 30. 00 100 % ww no trash HAPPY DANCE

[Superfly]

hmm I guess i shuld go to my local scrap yard an get all the soft lead and WW i can get for 50 cents a pound huh

Group buy Anybody

[Albertapete]

Some good news this week on the lead hunt, I managed to score a free 5 gal pail if ww as well as a chunk of nickle babbit that I am guessing to be about 15lbs give or take. I went to see a customer that I knew used babbit for his equipment and he gave me a box full of cast offs and scrap drippings that will melt into a nice ingot first chance I get.
I have yet to cast a bullit but figured I should collect what I can whenever I can so I have lots on hand when I finally get a mold :bigsmyl2:

[looseprojectile]

Not in my lifetime.
My son made a deal with the local Mexican used tire dealer. $30.00 a bucket.
I thought at the time that he was being way too generous. That seems ok now.
I remember that I have bought surplus ammo for five cents a round or less and that seems cheap now but let a few years pass and even fifty cents seems to be the going rate for ammo. A good scrounger can still get lead for free or cheap.
My nephew that I havent heard from in years called a few days ago and told me that he has some lead for me. Couple of hundred pounds. Got it when he replaced an old tile roof.
Get the word out that you want lead and you never know when it will show up.
I do pretty good trading boolits for wheel weights.


Life is good

[home in oz]

They are drying up around here, too.

[a.squibload]

Stopped at the metal yard today, they want 85¢/lb, but all their lead gets thrown into one big box.
Found linotype, cast boolits, different shaped ingots, stick-on WWs, plumbers pipe, sheet lead, all in the same box.
And some weights like from an old scale, one was stamped, certified?
Also saw a bucket with about 2" of j-word bullets, looked like 7mm spire-point boat tails.
I think some reloader/caster gave it up and his stuff ended up at the scrapyard.
I got about 70 lbs, can only afford so much at a time.
The good news: if you're buying, they carry it to the car!

Plumber working on a freind's house last week lives near here,
said he might bring me some pipe once in a while,
said sometimes they're 100 lbs, hoped I didn't mind.
Haven't seen any yet though.

[lwknight]

Sprapyards are probably getting $0.85 from their smelters these days.
The market on lead is $1.02 .
Here is the catch that I have been seeing. Although the commodities market leads the lead prices , there is a delay of several months both ways. A few months ago when the market price of lead was $0.60 the local scrappers were paying $0.75 for lead because the market had been up to over a dollar.
Now the low prices thatwe had 2 months ago are catching up and the same scrap yards are paying only 53 cents per pound even though the market is back up over 1 dollar.

WWs are even lower than ever this year at the scrapyards. I think the going rate offer is thirty cents per pound.

What this exactly means is that the scrapyard prices will go up over the next few months and continue to go up even if the market stops where it is today.

The scrap buy prices are at a low for the year right now , so don't sell anything!

[Randall]

Just priced lead at the local scrapper, $.80 for WW,$1.05 for pure. I really do not want to pay that much so I will wait a while and hope it comes down.

[lwknight]

I think you will be waiting a very long time.

[WILCO]

They are drying up around here, too.

Pliers and darkness are all you need to get some. :shock:
I know, I know, too desperate. It's good to have a plan though. [smilie=s:

[a.squibload]

Beep beep beep beep woooooot woooooot eeeeeooooo eeeeeooooo...

[FISH4BUGS]

Yes , nice clean pretty ingots are better than nasty old WWs in a rusty barrel.

Call me crazy but a sorted bucket of wheel weights in just as nice as ingots. Up here in NH the fall and early spring are smelting times - not too hot and not too windy. I usually smelt enough to last through the winter until the next smelting session.
It all depends on how much I shoot the subguns, though. You can burn through 1000 loaded rounds in an afternoon of full auto fun!

[9.3X62AL]

Scrap dealers are little more than latter-day alchemists, trying to turn lead into gold. The 'law of diminishing returns' kicked in long ago for me when it comes to scrounging and smelting. I doubt I'll do much smelting again, other than the 150# of WW I have sitting in a 15 gallon barrel under the casting bench. If I hear one more tire dude tell me that it's "illegal" for him so give or sell me WWs, I might just bounce a rock off his head. Scrapper bullsquat has all the tire people scared spitless. The upshot of all this--it's easier and less expensive to buy 10# of marijuana here than to get 1000# of lead.

Less work--less time--less stress to just bite the boolit and get "guaranteed assay" metal from a place like Rotometals. Not a plug for the company, just my view of the "time invested vs. gain received" equation in the Condor Cuddling Capitol of Capricious Crapola--California.

[ulav8r]

Bought a 5 gal bucket nearly full 2 weeks ago for $35, two days later got a 3 gal. bucket from the same tire store for 17.50.:oops: They got split and mixed in order to get them home. Dumped them on the drive and used a leaf blower to get rid of some of the dirt. Sorted out the stick ons, cigarette butts, iron and zinc weights that I could find. Ended up with 280 lbs of WW, about 5 lbs of stick ons and 15-20 lbs of iron and zinc weights that were not weighed. Smelted the WW's in two sessions. The first yielded 101 ingots at 126 lbs. The second yielded 73 ingots, not weighed.

My smelting sessions turned up several iron and zinc weights that I missed in my first sort. I skimmed off 30 pounds of clips and had 32 pounds of iron and zinc weights. Took them to the recycler and got $11.28 for the clips and weights.:bigsmyl2: