plumber lead

[686]

is plumber lead pure soft lead. is it good for bb shooting?

[hunter64]

Yes Plumbers lead is as close to pure as you can get other than buying foundry lead. It is extremely hard to find in my area as it was stopped being used about 30-35 years ago and I am in the plumbing industry and I haven't seen anything since the early 70's.

[Hunter]

I do believe plumber's lead is pure lead and it is pretty soft but I do not know the bh.
They sell it at the local plumbing supply house I get my materials from in 1 pound ingots about the size of the Lyman ingot mold.

[32 20 Mike]

Yes Plumbers lead is as close to pure as you can get other than buying foundry lead. It is extremely hard to find in my area as it was stopped being used about 30-35 years ago and I am in the plumbing industry and I haven't seen anything since the early 70's.

I worked for ORCHARD SUPPLY hardware (owned by sears/k-mart) part time last summer and they carried it in 5 # blocks. It was more than I wanted to pay when WWs are free. But they did have it. I think it was about $3.00/lb.

Mike

[hunter64]

I meant to find plumbers lead in any quantity in an older home or sitting in a plumbers back shed would be really lucky and where I live it has been outlawed since the early 80's. Only schedule 40 and up cast iron or copper is allowed. I do once in a while run into the odd elbow made of lead in a customers home and promptly state "that is against the code" and I will change it for free. They are happy and I get a free elbow or two of lead for 5 minutes of work.

[piwo]

Plumbers carry some lead with them on their trucks for their use, and I suppose this is what is being referred to "plumbers lead" which you can purchase at a supply house. The "plumbing lead" that I refer to is the lead that is actually used in pipes on construction sites, and my cousin the plumber collects it for me. Apparently there is now more competition at the job sites for this lead as he says others are snatching it up whereas in the past, they couldn't have been bothered. I don't know the composition of this lead, but it has no "ring" when dropped whatsoever, and when dropped onto another brick, it sticks to it like it was covered with pine tar. When ingots of my dental lead are dropped in the same manner, they "ping" audibly, and bounce off.

If anyone wants to test a few boolits of each type of lead, I'll send some out for analysis.......

[carpetman]

Piwo--The dental lead bounces off when dropped onto another ingot of it. You'd think it would bite in.

[piwo]

Piwo--The dental lead bounces off when dropped onto another ingot of it. You'd think it would bite in.

You'd think!

[KCSO]

Plumbers lead is about 98% pure lead and i use it as such. I am currently smelting down about 500 pounds of this stuff for muzzleloaders. I also alloy it 1-20 and 1-40 for use in my Sharps rifles.

[Duff L Bagg]

Don’t forget to hit up the roofers in your area for lead also. The weather boots that they use for the vent pipes that protrude through the roof are pure lead too.
I recently had my house reroofed and I ask the roofers about the lead boots and for the price of a few barley pops they were more than happy to bring me close to 200 pounds of scrap lead.

[burr7870]

I just picked up about 100 lbs of lead pipe pipe today (including a few bars of 50/50 bar solder). Is the "plumbers lead" you are refering to the lead pipe? That was all of the lead pipe the guy had.

He did have a couple hundred pounds of scrap bullets from an indoor range that only allows jacketed bullets. Has anyone used the lead from the jacketed bullets? Is this pure lead or a total unknown?

I just found this site the other night & I have learned soooo much from everyone.
Thanks for the info & the laughs!!!

[piwo]

Yep, the plumbers lead I refer to is the pipe lead. Melts down nice and makes a real soft boolit. Wish I had a ton of it stored away........

[GLL]

The string of hexagonal ingots are what is called plumber's lead around here. Each little segment is 5 pounds (25 pounds per string). I recently pick up 300 pounds along with a few hundred pounds of lead "wire' coils, some roofing lead, and some 60/40 solder debris from the local radiator shop.

Makes for clean smelting into ingots.

Good stuff !

Jerry

[Goatlips]

Nice looking stuff, GLL! Are the coils what they use for boolitswaging, something I know less than nothing about? Trade material maybe?

Goatlips

[G. Blessing]

Thats depressing....

I need to start scrounging around more...

G.

[GLL]

Goatlips:

I "think" you are correct about the swagging coils but you know more than I do about that !

I would happily trade it off for wheel weights but do not know anyone around southern California who is into bullet swagging. Shipping expense would be prohibitive .

I have no trouble finding good lead @ 50 cents/pound but wheel weights are getting to be VERY difficult to find here.

Jerry

[wiljen]

shameless plug time - you might look at the Plus Metal GB I just started GLL. It is an enrichment alloy that could be used to make essentially WW from pure lead and would be lighter to ship than a trade.

[piwo]

Didn't like my last response.. was in a hurry to get into a class. The hex ingots of "plumbers lead" are what I too consider plumbers lead: the pipes are what I called "plumbing lead" in a previous post since it was used as plumbing pipes and what I am able to get in some quantity. I don't have any true "plumbers lead" myself at this time, but I did have 2 or 3 ingots a few years ago.

[armoredman]

Just located some plumbers lead not too far from me, $8.83 for 5 pounds. Called some plumbers locally for leads on thestuff, and the second guy I called knew right off I wanted for casting! We shot the breeze for a while, and he told me where to get the stuff, as he used to cast sometime ago.
So, if you need a pro-2A/pro-casting plumber in Tucson, Terry @ Progressive Plumbing Systems is the guy to call.

[Goatlips]

GLL, you might check the Bullet Swaging Forum over on the Graybeard site if you want to trade or sell that wire. I sent them a note to check out yer picture - don't be too fast to melt it down.

Goatlips