Range Lead sifter

Hello everyone,

I am new to this forum, but I have been casting my own bullets and reloading since I was a little kid. I am working on my mechanical engineering degree and for one of my classes we are designing a mechanical device that will sift the lead from all of the dirt and junk. I have seen a lot of different ideas on youtube and forums. I want to make a device that works better than these but is still cheap enough that an average person could afford it. So currently we are working on "defining your customers needs". So my questions to every one are:

1. Would a device like this be of interest?
2. What size would be best? i.e. weight and volume
3. How much dirt would it have to process to be worth your time to use?
4. Would shoveling dirt into it or having it pick up dirt itself be better?
5. What are the environmental concerns about something like this?

any other ideas or needs in a device like this are welcome, the more the merrier.

Thank you.

Its super easy and cheap to build ones owne. Cheap 8ft 1x4 from hardware store, some chicken wire and and two trunk handles. Screw and a staple gun. Less than 20 bucks and your off to the race.

Cut the 1x4 into two 3ft peices and two 1ft peices. Now assemby your rectangle. Now cut out your 1/4 mesh hardware cloth with about an inch of overlap up the sides. The staple it in place with the staples either touching or slightly over lapping all the way around. Now flip it over and attach the handles on the short ends.

Dont fill it more than you can lift. Leaving some space to sift it around helps alot. Fill it full and you will get tired quick.

I keep a tote in my truck and use a bucket to carry it drom the berm to the tote. That tote fills in about 7 trips and yields over 200lbs of good clean lead if full. Takes less than an hour to fill the tote.

Only difference is I use 2x4"s ..yes it adds weight, but overbuild everything..

That sounds like an interesting project. Do a google search for archeology and look at the sifters that those guys use. You can go as simple as hardware cloth on a wooden frame to something motorized. I saw it posted someplace to look for the end cap from a large electric motor to use as a sifter.

I thought about something that would hold a bobcat's front loader worth of dirt. Then allow that scoop to sit under it to catch the falling dirt so it can be put back on the berm without having to be handled again. 0.25" max opening to catch the smaller bullets. .17cal expand or vaporize.

You might look at how lead shot is harvested from trap/skeet ranges.

12345

better idea would be magnetic lead, you know. the kind you cast for the asperly aimless.

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Originally Posted by brass410

better idea would be magnetic lead, you know. the kind you cast for the asperly aimless.

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I've had my eye out for a lead magnet for years, there almost as rare as brass magnets!

The sifter box is basic and simple to make, what we need is a frame that will hold the sifter box either a TP type frame with support cables or a frame with sides that the sifter box can move back and forth in, it would be nice if you catch the dirt with the wheelbarrow and easily dump the sifted bullets into a 2 gallon bucket say some kind of trough or funnel device

D Crockett - That is called a Grizzly Feeder often enough. Not too hard to make tho next time I make one I'll try expanded or punched metal, instead of hardware cloth, probably.

12345

Hmmm old washing machine inner drum with the holes enlarged... a back bearing, toss a flat belt around the drum to a 12 volt gear motor... make it in a stand that tips to empty the drum into buckets

Or a cement mixer. The problem is that it is a size sorter. Results will vary depending on the range surface material.

Those 'gold wheels' would get you even the very fine lead bits, but take more processing time/effort

The problem I found was that the bullets (lead) are not intact and end up like heavy dirt. the dirt around here isn't very granular and doesn't sift very easily.

Some kind of sluice box or specific gravity separator would be far better for lead in small granules to powder size particles; fluidized bed (usually in water) is often used for that, if I was processing a lot of dirt I know how to do that, did some for gold mining. Maybe a way to downsize that, hmmm.

Im thinking that for my muzzle loading only range which is in a sand/gravel river bottom a trommel sifted would be good for removing the fine sand, then I would only have to hand sort the lead from the gravel which is about 30% of the volume. I have a 1.5 cuft harbor freight cement mixer to mount a 1/4" expanded metal mesh cylinder to. Use an inverter cliped to my diesel truck battery to run it.

Screens, sifters, sieves, etc... work fine when the berm is dry, sandy and lacks clay. Around here our berms are made of top soil and large amounts of clay which clumps up and doesn’t work well trying to force it through a screen.

igolfat8 nailed it. The problem is in the variation in soil types encountered being used in the berm. Low plasticity index materials (sands) are easy to recover bullets from but the clays are tough. A scalping screen on top of one or two increasingly finer screens in a vibrating frame sloped to allow the larger materials to slide off and be discarded will work if the berm materials can be broken into small enough particles. Some of the high p.i. clays are so hard/tough when dry I'm guessing it would take a gyratory crusher to break them up.

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Originally Posted by D Crockett

I think that a trammel the kind that gold miners use. the one that has a big round tube like thing that goes round and round. it does not have to be as big as the kind I have seen on tv but something with a hopper on it to dump the dirt into to feed it. and a catcher on the end to catch the lead. just my thoughts D Crockett

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Why did I not think of that, I made a small portable one one years ago to get smokey quartz from creek sand. Regards Stephen

I want to build a screen about 4 foot wide that attaches to my trackhoe but instead of rolling towards you like the bucket does, it rolls away and has a hydraulic vibrator so it sifts the berm and drops the dirt right back where it came from as you work your way up the berm.

Standard archaeological rocking sifting screens should work very well. You can easily build your own or purchase one online.

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Originally Posted by Clovis

Standard archaeological rocking sifting screens should work very well. You can easily build your own or purchase one online.

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An archeologist friend of mine suggested buying what she uses. While probably better made than what I could cobble together, they're a bit pricey at sometimes a hundred dollars or more (for the rocker version). That's a lot to spend for something you're using to try and save money.

OP, I’ll take a run at your questions.
1. Yes. Interested in all things related to shooting, loading, casting and getting lead.
2. Size? It would need to be small or light enough for an old guy to find it in the shed, load it in the pickup, unload it after shooting a couple of hours, drag it to the berm, use it for 30 minutes, drag it back to the pickup, load it, get home and unload it. Hmm, I’d guess 10 pounds is about the limit. I’m tired just typing about it...
3. How much dirt to process? Hmm old guy, bad back, arthritic hands using it after a shooting session, not much! Probably a dozen or so turns of an Ames No. 2 Pony which is about two Homer buckets worth.
4. Self shoveling? No. That would immediately make it too big, expensive for a retired guys hobby.
5. Environmental? Berm dirt has lots of “vaporized” lead. Sifting it will get it airborne. Stand upwind. Also I’ll guess there’s a line to cross into mining. Mines are heavily regulated. Prolly should know what the basic elements of law are on what constitutes mining.
Best of luck. Dad used to say “Bet on luck over skill. It’s more consistent”.

Look here for some good designs.

https://aeoscreen.com/

I mined dirt/clay with a 18"x24" 2x3 box with 1/4 screen on it. Had to push the dirt and clay though with my hand. I had on gloves. It was slow. Then I learned if I take 8" off the top a day and move the dirt forward as to not re-sift it the dirt had time to dry in the sun. Making it much easier to sift. I spent 40 hours doing this over the course of a week. I ended up with 5 five gal buckets of range scrap after re-sifting at home and removing most the small rocks. I will tell you my body screamed at me all week long.

Thank you,
I watched some videos of the machines harvesting the lead from a trap/skeet range, they are good at not letting you see how there machines are running, but I did notice that they get a lot of shot out of there.

We are currently building both a shaker table and a trammel to compare which one operates better, both are going to be able to fit in an suv still so that is is portable.

Thank you, I didn't think of having it dump into a wheelbarrow, we were worried about how to prevent it from dumping a huge pile of dirt in on place.

I know cal ranch sells a small sluice box, but doesn't it use a lot of water, or do you think it would work to recirculate it?

I am going to have to look up a gyratory crusher because I do not know what those are.

I guess the first time through I'll sift all the rocks out of my berm. Then It'll be easy for the next go round

I can cast a large amount of 1" zinc balls to ad to my trommel so it also acts like a ball mill while sifting the clay at my other range.

In the case of wet-sieving, 1 cup of baking soda in a 5 gallon bucket full of loose clay/soil, topped off with water, mixed and let set overnight will turn the contents into a very runny soup that will go through a 1/4" screen about as fast as you can pour it in. I learned that while taking a university archaeology course.

2¢

A gyratory crusher is like those cone & sieve deals we used to use to turn fruit into fruit paste, I cannot remember the name of those. Cone inside the outside cone is moved in a small circle at the top, so that material in between the two surfaces is alternately "Crunched" and released to smash it up. Any site showing a rock processing plant will have pics but finding one that shows the inner workings is something I'd rather do once I get sleep; A jaw crusher is the same principle and gives you the same basic results, just different details.

In my experience one of the conditions of digging a berm is that the material must be returned to the berm after the lead is extracted. That can be a trifle difficult if you're using a water sluicing arrangement.

My thoughts would be a unit for the hobbiest and not a professional,unit. I would make a drum with ends and 1/4 mesh as the sides. One end could be open to shovel the dirt into. The other end would need a door to retrieve the lead. The drum could be rotated by hand or motor. The drum would need the provision to be rotated level and at a slight incline. Depending on the dirt material the drum could be rotated level to remove dirt and then be inclined so that the lead material would accumulate at the bottom of the inclined drum. There the door could be opened and the lead removed. With sandy material the drum could remain inclined as rhe sand would immediately fall through the screen. I would think a volume of 2-3 shovel full of dirt would be right.
One could experiment with a chute at the bottom end so that the lead would fall out into a bucket without removing by hand. I would have a wood floor under the drum so ease the removing of the dirt would be easier.

Nate 72, that all depends, how mobile does it need to be, how old are you?, how quick are you to leave the area, I'm 84 no one hurries me, but both rotators are shot, so , a `10 x18" box with 1/4" cloth is fine for me, just my 2Cent's , Fivefang

got my trommel built. now to "range test" it.

I'm going to be cleaning out the indoor range at my club. The sand in the catch area is ground into powder from years of use and needs to be replaced if we decide to keep the range in use. I did a little non-scientific testing and found the "sand" to be loaded with fragmented bullets. Sifting it through 1/4" hardware cloth left the sand with slightly over 50%, by weight, of reclaimable lead. It is now an issue of trying to get at least some of that lead separated from the sand. Given a huge propane budget and plenty of time I could run the whole mess through the smelting pot but that ain't gonna happen.

Obvious thing is to try to a finer sifter. This weekend I built one. 1/8" hardware cloth is available, but not locally, and it is made of such fine wire as to have little strength. A search of McMaster-Carr Supply Co. turned up a huge selection of steel wire mesh options. (M-C has a huge inventory, and while not low priced they get it out FAST. I ordered from them again yesterday [Saturday] and it has been shipped an should be here tomorrow[Monday] I settled on a mesh with .120" openings and .047" wire size, available in a section 12" x 24". BINGO!!
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I have been meaning to, and forgetting to, pick up some 5/4 pine for a frame. Luck smiled on me last week and laid 5 sections of 5/4 x 12 Southern Yellow Pine, about 30" long, in my hands. I built a frame and have material for another, smaller one, that will be used to try to segregate about 50# of mixed lead shot.

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As soon as I can find time I will sift another batch and see how much lead gets left behind using the finer screen.