Ok so I'm going to go look for lead for the first time...Advice?

[Sailormilan2]

Searchtempest. Do a search for lead bars or lead ingots. I just fond a guy with 200# of scrap lead, in 1`# bars for $1. Really cheap, even if I do have to drive a little ways.

[lightman]

You have received a lot of good advice but the one that I like best is what I call "networking". Ask your friends, relatives and coworkers to look for lead. The more eyes the better.

[David2011]

Beware; some tire dealers seem to want more per pound for wheel weights and everything else in the bucket than you would pay for clean ingots. I had a tire shop offer me 1-1/2 buckets of miscellaneous tire weights and other garbage for only $180.00 a few years ago. Thanks, but "No thanks!"

[frkelly74]

So here in Saginaw, just up the road from Flint where the lead water pipe debacle is still playing out, The City is slowly taking out lead water service lines. Yesterday they were on the street where our alley comes out and had the road blocked , so I stopped. I spoke to the man down in the hole and noticed he was standing on a 4" long chunk of lead pipe. I blurted out , " hey that's lead, can I have it? " . He said " sure " . He also said that some services they remove the pipe and some they leave if it's not in the way of installing the new pipe. Anyway he ended up cutting about 7 feet of pipe out and gave it to me. My comment was " jackpot, Thank you". I had traded some other scrap for some lead pipe to the scrap yard before and was happy with that, free is absolutely better though. The range I go to does not seem to mind if you go and pick up the lead off the ground, picking is good right after a nice rain. Lead is available but you have to look and be prepared to grab it when it shows up.

A side note here on range scrap.... The jacket material is worth about $1.20 a pound here if you sort out the steel and most of the dirt. The scrap Yard here is family owned and quite easy to deal with.

[Stopsign32v]

The update for this thread is you guys discouraged me enough to give up on trying before trying.

In all seriousness some of and most of the replies make it seem like at this point it isn't worth the effort. With my job schedule and family I couldn't even begin to imagine to have enough time to make a relationship with places to where they would hold me lead.

I was under the assumption that you could take a bucket, some cash, and my striking good looks and get some lead from tire shops. It seems as if I am roughly 30 years too late. You older guys honestly have no idea how lucky you were to live in earlier times.

[Hanzy4200]

I'm smelting range scrap as we speak. My local yard told me they are paying $.10 a lb for wheel weights. That means they will sell them for $.20. I plan to take a set of snips with me when I go to off load my bullet jackets this weekend.

Last year, I scored a pile of 50/50 solder drippings for $.50 a lb from them. I think I ended up with around 25 lbs of pure ingots. THAT was a score.

[blackthorn]

Don't give up! Take the excellent suggestions offered here and start looking but treat it as a possibly long-term project. A request for a friend to find/save lead for you might not pay off for a long time but nothing ventured, nothing gained. As an example: I gave a girl at work a hand full of .22 low velocity shorts so her boyfriend could deal with a pest problem in an urban setting. At some point I mentioned that I needed lead to cast bullets and one morning I arrived at my office to find a 50lb lead forklift weight in return for maybe 20, .22 shorts---SCORE!!!

[Froogal]

The update for this thread is you guys discouraged me enough to give up on trying before trying.

In all seriousness some of and most of the replies make it seem like at this point it isn't worth the effort. With my job schedule and family I couldn't even begin to imagine to have enough time to make a relationship with places to where they would hold me lead.

I was under the assumption that you could take a bucket, some cash, and my striking good looks and get some lead from tire shops. It seems as if I am roughly 30 years too late. You older guys honestly have no idea how lucky you were to live in earlier times.

Don't feel like you are the only one. Just a few years ago I was also under the impression that I could just visit the local tire shop and pick up those used, lead wheel balance slugs. I was even prepared to offer some money. To make a long story short, I did end up with about 3/4 of a 5 gallon bucket and it was free. About 1/4 of that bucket ended up being something I could actually use. The rest of it was non-lead weights. Some even made of plastic. Also ended up with stuff that should have been thrown in the trash, candy wrappers, cigarette butts, etc. Gave up on that idea.

[dverna]

The update for this thread is you guys discouraged me enough to give up on trying before trying.

In all seriousness some of and most of the replies make it seem like at this point it isn't worth the effort. With my job schedule and family I couldn't even begin to imagine to have enough time to make a relationship with places to where they would hold me lead.

I was under the assumption that you could take a bucket, some cash, and my striking good looks and get some lead from tire shops. It seems as if I am roughly 30 years too late. You older guys honestly have no idea how lucky you were to live in earlier times.

We are all wired differently. Some people actually enjoy casting, lubing and sizing bullets!!! Not me. I just enjoy shooting.

I know a guy who loves to ice fish...in part because it gets him out of the house and away from "the nag".

I am not one of the guys who enjoys looking for wheel weights, sorting them and dealing with the mess. Lots of others love it. They are neither smarter or dumber than I, just different. If I could not afford to buy alloy, I would do the work.

When I win the lottery, I will never cast another bullet, and never reload another pistol round. Some guys will buy more molds and a Dillon 1050 in every caliber...go figure?

[slim1836]

I always considered scrounging lead for free as a challenge/hobby when I was working. Now retired along with the Covid situation, I don't get out much, however, it's still out there waiting to be found. I still pick up lead wherever I can, they add up, I've got about 50 lbs. just waiting to be rendered when the time is right. It cost nothing to collect lead, not much to render into ingots, and casting boolits if fun to me. The reward of hitting the kill zone or bullseye with something I found and cast is very rewarding.

Don't think of it as work, I am out there looking for a future boolit. I tell my wife that each ingot is worth at least a buck, they understand bucks. She also knows not to sell the ingots for scrap when I pass on, the value of my lead is worth more to other casters than to scrap yards.

Keep your eyes looking down and you will find them, just look in the parking lot of tire repair shops, particularly around their dumpsters and you will find.

Slim

[dondiego]

I have had the word out to all of my acquaintances over the last 40 years and lead has shown up in all forms and alloys. Sometimes I get a few pounds of old fishing weights, sometimes I get 5 pound ingots of pure plumbers lead, once I got a thousand pounds of lead pipe from my home town plumbing replacement project. I loaded that guy up a few boxes of .41 mags.!

[The Dar]

The update for this thread is you guys discouraged me enough to give up on trying before trying.

You will never know unless you ask, believe me it works. Please don't give up. Wheel weights are still out there, I have two tire shops that I get WW from on a regular basis.

[Sasquatch-1]

I just did a quick check online at prices for powder, primers and bullets. I did this for a very light load I load in my 44's which is 7 grn. of Unique with a 240 to 250 grn. bullet. At current prices I found listed (whether you can actually get these supplies at these prices or not is unknow)1 pound of Unique is $32.00, 1000 primers $75.00 and 1000 bullets $132.00. This did not include shipping. For the round I am talking about I can load 1000 rounds with the purchased bullets for about 25 cents a round. Casting my own drops it to about 11 cents a round.

Object of all this is don't get discourage. Finding lead and casting your own will save you over half the cost.

[lightman]

The update for this thread is you guys discouraged me enough to give up on trying before trying.

In all seriousness some of and most of the replies make it seem like at this point it isn't worth the effort. With my job schedule and family I couldn't even begin to imagine to have enough time to make a relationship with places to where they would hold me lead.

I was under the assumption that you could take a bucket, some cash, and my striking good looks and get some lead from tire shops. It seems as if I am roughly 30 years too late. You older guys honestly have no idea how lucky you were to live in earlier times.

I would encourage you to not give up. Lead is still out there. Talk with the tire shop where you buy your tires or get your car serviced. Run by the scrap yard on Saturday morning and ask about lead.

It takes a while to get a "network" going but it will pay off.

[Photog]

If I buy 96-2-2 lead from GT Bullets at $2.50/lbs, it works out to $.05 per 125gr boolit and $,0625 for 168gr boolits. For that, my cost is still under .10 per round for 38 spl, or think of it as $8.99 per HUNDRED rounds. Not bad compared to factory ammo. Or I have bought lead on ebay at 1.50/lbs and I mix in a bit of superhard from rotometals, and cost per boolit goes down to .03 or .035 per boolit. Is the further reduction in cost worth the effort? For me, no. But if I had all the time and energy in the world, sure I would scrounge scrap lead and spend hours sorting, alloying and cleaning. Sure.

[Minerat]

Just picked up a bucket with about 65 lbs of lyman bars and cast bullets, a bar of pure lead and a counter weight 109 lbs paid $80~75¢/#

[Gtek]

Yes the glory days have seemingly passed, I still have a telescoping magnet in truck just in case. Found a big one two weeks ago, these days woo-hoo moment. Went and bought a lottery ticket, well, should have bought something else! Serious on the networking and posting a card at work or something. Just like a lot of things in life it blesses/smacks when least expected.

[lightman]

Try placing ads on the local swap shops and Craigs list wanting to buy lead. Buy a cheap or used bathroom scale to use and pay by weight. Keep some cash on hand.

[lightman]

Yes the glory days have seemingly passed, I still have a telescoping magnet in truck just in case. Found a big one two weeks ago, these days woo-hoo moment. Serious on the networking and posting a card at work or something.

Its gotten to be a game with me and a buddy, looking out of the window at intersections, Railroad crossing and exit ramps for weights. I keep a magnet on a stick just for this purpose. Over a years time we'll come close to filling up a 5 gallon bucket. And yeah, we are careful of the traffic!

[Forrest r]

At the end of the day this is a sweat equity game. There's no free lunch in finding lead, turning lead into ingots, casting & reloading.

You get out of it what you put into it. Sometimes people are better off buying their casting alloys and spending quality time learning how to cast a good bullet. Then learning how to reload that good bullet without destroying it.