Got a keel, got a keel, got a keel

[Retumbo]

Every body sing along...

[USSR]

Great, now what does the alloy consist of?

Don

[NyFirefighter357]

Great, that's the easy part, now the hard part starts!

[flyingmonkey35]

Now you need to do a video, HOW to Shoot a boat through a gun!

[Markopolo]

or, how to harvest lead with a old chainsaw!!!

[Winger Ed.]

Cool.

Now ya need to make a railroad gun to fire it in.

[Retumbo]

amatures...trebuchet all the way

[Retumbo]

Great, now what does the alloy consist of?

Don

I'll be sending off a sample

[Conditor22]

Pictures or it didn't happen

[468]

Smooth sailing from here...

[farmbif]

excuse me for butting in, I'll volunteer as the safety officer here. one thing to watch out for on boat keel if it was painted with anti foul paint, a real good reason to be wearing a mask, a chemical exposure kind probably best, when melting that stuff down. sniffing those burning anti foul paint fumes will mess you up real bad.

[tward]

Good find on the keel especially if it’s not attached to a boat! I agree about the bottom paint, a lot of them are tin based and are easily absorbed. If it was an external keel it might be almost pure lead, on the boat I had I could repair minor dings with a hammer reforming the soft lead. Have fun and be careful. Tim

[OS OK]

Do a picture thread of how you part it up and ingotize the lead.

Everyone is always daydreaming of finding a keel ... show us some reality now? OK?

[imashooter2]

Great, now what does the alloy consist of?

Don

“Any heavy stuff I can find that melts.”

[USSR]

Quote Originally Posted by USSR View Post
Great, now what does the alloy consist of?

Don

“Any heavy stuff I can find that melts.”

Whatever floats your boat. I cast a lot of HP's, so to get results like this it can't be anything that melts.

Don

[Retumbo]

Do a picture thread of how you part it up and ingotize the lead.

Everyone is always daydreaming of finding a keel ... show us some reality now? OK?

I will probably do a video about it on my Youtube channel

[JM7.7x58]

Sail boat keel and pewter mixed to give a BHN anywhere from 9 to 12, and then powder coated makes a fine solid wadcutter. Push that wadcutter to +P velocity, it will do it’s job just fine. No hollow point necessary. I definitely wouldn’t try to catch one with my bare hands.

Congratulations on your find. If it was free, then another congratulations! I have a few hundred pounds of sail boat keel that I’ve been working with. It’s harder than roofing sheet lead and softer then wheel weights. It makes good pistol bullets when mixed with pewter. Application of a thin PC jacket makes using mystery metal so much easier.

Yahoo! For cheap mystery metal!

JM

[Retumbo]

Sail boat keel and pewter mixed to give a BHN anywhere from 9 to 12, and then powder coated makes a fine solid wadcutter. Push that wadcutter to +P velocity, it will do it’s job just fine. No hollow point necessary. I definitely wouldn’t try to catch one with my bare hands.

Congratulations on your find. If it was free, then another congratulations! I have a few hundred pounds of sail boat keel that I’ve been working with. It’s harder than roofing sheet lead and softer then wheel weights. It makes good pistol bullets when mixed with pewter. Application of a thin PC jacket makes using mystery metal so much easier.

Yahoo! For cheap mystery metal!

JM

This keel has been sitting around for a couple of years that I have known about it. Tried to get a group of guys together to remove it and split it. Ofcourse everyone is in until the work needed to start, then half disappeared. It was on the back burner until a few days ago when the owner came to me and said I can have it at a reduced rate if I get rid of it.

By now he has most of the sailboat taken apart, just the lower part left.

[RogerDat]

If it is lead it doesn't really matter what the alloy is, you can make bullets from it. Not that many things get mixed in with lead. Antimony and tin are most common ones for the historical uses of lead. Makes it a really good bet that what you have is a lot of bullets after a lot of work. After all even Lyman #2 is 90% lead so even plain soft lead gets you 90% of the way to Lyman #2

I might mention there is a member that sells some really nice cast boolit and redneck gold embossed molds. Allows one to cast 10 pounds in 4 ingots with each fill. I bought some in order to clean up all my scrap into ingots of known alloy. I was doing 110 lb. batches so the capacity and good stacking made the molds worthwhile. In the past I used bread loaf pans from Salvation Army or garage and estate sales for bulk lead storage. Filled about an inch they make nice slab ingots that will stack and weigh between 10 - 12 pounds. Too big to fit in pot though, harder to use to blend into some other alloy. Could only make big batches and couldn't easily fine tune things to get say a 60/40 mix of two batches.

You have your work cut out but I'm betting you will really like sitting back and looking at a nice stack of completed ingots. I seem to recall enjoying very much sitting in a chair sipping coffee and gazing at this lovely stack of Wheel Weights. Don't know your keel size but would guess it would be a good deal more than this, which as I recall was around 300 to 400 pounds. Gotta love those Harbor Freight furniture moving dolly's. It may not be really "portable" but I can move it around the garage and it sits on floor under a shelf where I can roll it out as needed. Has a board under the ingots with a rope so I don't have to bend down to move it. Bending is NOT one of my strong suits.

[imashooter2]

Quote Originally Posted by USSR View Post
Great, now what does the alloy consist of?

Don



Whatever floats your boat. I cast a lot of HP's, so to get results like this it can't be anything that melts.

Don

Sure, of course I was responding as to the typical composition of keels.