Fake video.............
After unexpectedly being away from home for the weekend (my wife took me on a ride on Route 66 for my 66th birthday), we came home and discovered the grandchild had broken open two of those old car batteries and put the plates in a plastic bin filled with water and apparently baking soda from the evidence.
what hospital is he in?
All safety precautions aside, it's your house your rules. If he can't abide by them then perhaps it's time for a dorm room.
Recently watched a video on a guy breaking down a car battery to get lead. Didn't seem too dangerous (not looking for an argument), but... I would never do it after watching the video. It looked like WAY too much work for the small amount of lead he got out of it. I'd have to be pretty desperate to mess with that!
look at it this way. batteries yield 3-4 pounds of lead. you can sell a whole battery in most parts of the u.s. for 10 bucks. Take that $10, and buy lead from your local scrap metals yard and walk out with 10 maybe 15 pounds of lead. WIN-WIN.......................
Thats a Cool Birthday gift! Happy 66th Birthday!
If the EPA find out whats going on,penalties may well exceed the value of your house and land.Bear in mind that if he blabs to his college buddies about what he s doing,one of them can drop a dime on you for a reward of half the penalty.
I can't imagine a battery being so toxic that the EPA would be any bit concerned about two batteries being stripped out and their contents being dumped on the ground. In my younger years when I was a rural firefighter with the local fire department we flushed down many cars with front end collisions where the batteries were crushed. All of the batteries are placed in a location that makes them very vulnerable to being crushed. So, this argument just doesn't hold any water. What I was more concerned about would be the possible toxic fumes getting his grandmother or I when he tries molding lead projectiles out of the plates in our basement when we come back from taking care of my wife's ailing aunt for a few days.
Well if your bomb/tornado shelter consists of heavy plywood set on top of your stacks of molds and dies in boxes you might be getting pretty close to enough. Unless you decide to add a mother-in-law bomb & tornado shelter out in the garden shed, no not the casting shed, the metal one with the tarp roof, yeah that one. Might need some more "building materials" to build that second shelter. I'm sure dear wife will be most supportive of the purchases too, since they are for dear mother.
Some Battery places will pay over $10 for some batteries.
Sell them and buy clean alloy
He ain't listening!
I am, but he ain't. We have already suggested all of this stuff to him. Even emailed him some videos. But he sees free batteries laying around his parents house and it means free lead to him. I found out why today that he needs all of this free lead. He got a box in the mail today from Budsgunshop with a new 1851 Navy Revolver in it. But no round ball molds that I could see.
Why is this an issue? It is your home, why is he leaving stuff there and taking apart batteries at your home and not his parents or his own? Tell him he has 24 hrs to dispose of the batteries off your property or you will have them recycled yourself. Otherwise you are giving implicit permission for him to behave however he wants.
I think I figured out the problem: he must see the batteries as his only available source of lead.
Most scrap yards do not sell lead to the public (at least here in CA - maybe they do in MO).
So, selling the batteries means losing a source.
The simple solution is to show him how to buy lead on this forum.
Makes sense to me. Let us call the scrap yard and find out what they give for batteries while we look over all this clean casting lead for sale. And if that don't work stop being an enabler. Take them to scrap yard, or call scrap yard to pick them up. If he gets a little miffed, that's ok, doing dumb stuff should have negative consequences, insisting on doing dumb stuff in the face of your objections should have worse consequences.
You know when I hear about someone just bound and determined to do it the stupid way I generally like it best when they are arranging flowers stupid, or baking cupcakes stupid, or even painting their deck stupid. I just cringe when I think of someone that would ignore all the accumulated knowledge and even simple common sense from this forum playing with molten lead in preparation for playing with firearms. Sorry people who are that willfully foolish should be encouraged to take up badminton or quilting because they are a hazard to themselves and others around things that can cause injury in not handled with some care and thought.
Sorry to put it so bluntly but you need to tell him we sell them and buy lead or I'm going to call and have them disposed of. My house, my rules, even if you refuse to go along with them politely. I don't have to convince you, trying to was a courtesy, one you didn't appreciate. Now I'm telling you we haul them from here to scrap yard for the scrap value or I just call the scrap yard to come get them and they pay nothing but you don't do stupid things with them. Which is it going to be?
Color me ignorant! Is the lead he may get from batteries even suitable for muzzleloader balls?
I don't have any trouble buying lead myself either. Just this past week I bought a bucket of lead wheel weights that must weigh at least 70 pounds from my tractor tire dealer when I had them fix a car tire for me. But I had to give them $30 for it. And the child doesn't see this as being very intelligent as he can get all the lead he wants for free from all of these old batteries from the old wrecked cars laying around his parent's house. In his book we are the stupid ones. That means you and me and all of the other elderly people on this web site. And I am sure nobody on this web site has ever attempted to extract lead from batteries for casting lead projectiles. As none of us has ever read a Lyman reloading manual like the one we gave to the child for Christmas.
He is half right.
Obviously you can’t shoot a car battery from a gun, so starting with the free battery there are two paths to getting to a bullet.
He is on path 1, extract lead, make bullet, realize that alloy matters, stop.
Path 2 is far better, sell batteries, buy soft lead, make bullet, success!
Neither path costs him cash. For whatever reason he just can’t see that he’s picked the high cost (in terms of time) high risk path with very very low probability of success.
I’d explain it to him again, with an emphasis on congratulating him for his dedication to solving the problem. If he decides to continue just let him be, he’s probably past the really dangerous bits by now anyway so just needs to learn that the resuting bullets won’t shoot well and will lead badly.
If his parents yard is full of old cars ,why cant he do the smelting there.I think you should do some research on the costs of soil testing and remediation,and possible penalties before you allow this.I have seen this type of activity cost unsuspecting owners lots of money .This kid is trouble with a capital T.
What could possibly go wrong? Young person lacking experience and unwilling to take advice or follow rules messing with toxic chemicals in order to extract lead which will be melted to make bullets. I really can't see where anything could go wrong. Hardly seems possible.
Lord help you if you live near a wetlands or water course or someplace with a high water table and sandy soil. Junior pisses off one neighbor or just someone that knows what he is doing at your house and they drop a dime to the local environmental or dept. of natural resources unit. Not that he is likely to piss anyone off, he sounds like a thoughtful, respectful and polite young person. (yeah I know, it's a sin, I'll go to confession or something). In the end battery lead will be too hard and possibly full of chemicals that make the smoke from firing toxic or possibly corrode the snot out of his firearm.
I sent Don a small flat rate box of pure lead, hope he can get his grandson to use it.
I have made muzzleloader balls from battery lead over 35 years ago and it is very hard to load them as they do not like to engrave the rifling. I did dispose of the remains at my work so it did not go into the environment.
There is a big difference in washing down a broken car battery in an accident vehicle to protect the citizens than breaking one open on purpose. Course our fire dept. here washed about 20 gallons of gasoline down the sewer once, that did create some tension!
Thats a nice gesture leadman! I also offered to donate some soft lead suitable for a muzzleloader.
Where in Missouri do you live? I have a son that goes to college in Moberly, maybe your grandson can sell the batteries and we can make a deal on some safer lead.