Tips on Salvaging Range Lead

[cohutt]

I played a little yesterday evening at berm mining. Modest success. made a filter screen out of 1/4" hardware cloth on 2x4s built like a stretcher.

will i do it again? I dunno- perhaps i got it out of my system.

here is some of the report i posted in another reloading forum ealrier, hope it helps anyone who wants to try it. if your soil is sandy vs the georgia clay this might work pretty well-
__________________________________________________ __________
Ok here are the pics i took before my camera died

first, view from truck back to the berm destination. hardware cloth stretcher in bed




the contraption- note that I was too cheap to cut off the hardware cloth roll; i figure i'd leave it a 10 foot roll for future use of some sort.
it is 1/4", screwed down to the fram with lathing and sheetrock screws



first load- i tried to balance the rack on the recycling bin but it didn't work well. also broke the recycling bin (sorry, City of R, GA)



i think i did about 4 shovelfulls, spread out a bit and somewhat filtered. see them thar boolits on the ground too?



same lot, filtered more and ready to dump.



modest success, same lot in a bucket - pretty heavy, so i didn't quit at this point



little more to follow....

[cohutt]

eventually i couldn't tell rock from dirtclod from bullet as the dust got finer and covered everything. i started thinking i was getting more rocks than anything else, but then the weight of the handfuls tossed into the buckets suggested otherwise.

the rack worked ok, but i maybe would 2-stage it next time. i'd use 1/2" over the 1/4 to pull the bigger stuff out maybe.

found out less is better and to dump the shovel over a larger area of the rack to save sweeping and bouncing.

the bouncing/shaking worked pretty well- basically picked up one end of the stretcher and shook the contents down towards the other side, then i'd go to other end and do same.

after the shots above i backed truck up so i could balance the stretcher level between the tailagte and the berm hill. no bending over = ++

next pics show how i spread and used shovel to mush the dirtclods through

ok, a couple or 3 of these:



spaced apart a little



shake it out into a pile of rocks bullets and dirtclods. i picked the bigger rocks out here so i could do the final step in filtering



at this point i took the shovel and pressed it flatside over the pile with some downward pressure like i was spreading out a pile of sand or cement. this was pretty effective in busting up the clods and having the pieces fall through.

end product, ready for the bucket, complete with fluxing material for the smelt. some of what appears to be rocks are actually bullets- the deformed remains were pretty deceiving so i quit trying to pick the rocks out when i got to this stage. (The blood loss from the horseflies and finger lacerations was taking its toll and i wanted to get done before it rained. )




(camera died here. )

[BluesBear]

As Arte Johnson, wearing a German helmet, used to say at the end of every episode of Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In...

Veelllllly intelesting.


I hope you get enough useable lead to make the effort worthwhile.
Even though soil isn't the best test medium, it's interesting to see how some of them expanded.

[cohutt]

As Arte Johnson, wearing a German helmet, used to say at the end of every episode of Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In...

Veelllllly intelesting.


I hope you get enough useable lead to make the effort worthwhile.
Even though soil isn't the best test medium, it's interesting to see how some of them expanded.

funny how the lead pitol boolits stayed pretty much in shape. The jacketed bullets were the same. the HP jackets bullets were in all sorts of contorted shapes.
found a couple of hollow based minis that were huge in comparison and somewhere in between the pistol lead boolits and the HP remains in deformation.

[BluesBear]

Ahh your update wasn't there when I started my post. Wow, I type slow


Looks like a very good way to do it. I do think your idea of doing it in two stages might work better also.

If it were me when I got the buckets home I'd pour them back out on the rack and hit it with the hose. Seems like an easy way to not only get the dirt jacketing off the boolits but it'd also wash away most of the remaing non-smeltable materials.

[Goatlips]

Cohutt, your post and pictures ought to be put somewhere that we can find them again.

Now where did I put that roll of hardware cloth....

Goatlips

[randyrat]

If you do it right, you could sell a bunch of it for a profit and have a life time supply of Antimony. Re consituted/mined shot works great for trap shooting again. If you can clean it and sort it it will sell for at least .75/lb....Keep in mind round shot rolls straight oblong shot rolls to the side. Make a sheet metal ramp tilt it at an angle...All the good shot will roll down the middle into a bucket the rest will roll to the side.. Melt the junk into ingots for later use. you could have a gold mine NO a lead mine.

[jhalcott]

Gee whiz! I SURE WISH I knew that shot didn't make good bullets before I made several hundred!!

[truckjohn]

I tried smelting my range lead. Started with approx 3/4-shoebox volume of dry screened "Ore" like Cohutt showed above. Visual inspection showed it to be bullets + bullet chips + rocks + wood + dusty dirt. "Ore" weighed 30 lbs.

Fired up the $10.00 Harbor Freight Dutch oven over the turkey fryer stand.

Results:
Used about 75% of a standard BBQ tank of gas. $10.00
20 lbs lead, unknown alloy content.
7 lbs rocks, dusty dirt/ash, and jackets -- about 1/2 gallon paint can of trash
No explosions in the pot.

Overall......

1. In-efficient on Fuel vs Lead output. -- Need to design a "Pot Skirt" and some good insulation to keep heat "in".... as there is *lots* of loss smelting in open air.

2. Might even be worth fooling around with "Wood Gas" stoves to cut down on fuel costs even more -- I have plenty of "Wood Scrap" available free.

3. At this point, I agree that the Effort/Results ratio is skewed towards the "Effort" end much more than the "Results" end.

Thanks

John

[johnho]

At my range almost everyone shoots lead. Our berm is a fine sand with minor rocks. I have a small handheld screen type scoop that I scrape the lead and sand into, shake and the sand falls out. I can get 5 or 6 5 gallon buckets just under half full, which is about 50-60 pounds each, in about 30-40 minutes.

When it's melted down I end up with about 75% recovered lead and 25% scrap which is rock, sand and jackets. Now it does take a good 6-7 hours to melt this all down and use about 3/4 of a tank of propane. All in all pretty cheap except for the time to do it. I now have about 2300 pounds in small ingots and still collecting it.

It all depends on your range berm from what others have said about their experience. Our range has never been cleaned so there is over 30 years of lead screaming at me whenever I change targets.

John

[cohutt]

It will be a while before i have time to smelt it all down so i pulled a sample and sorted it by hand to check the ratio of lead vs rocks etc.

First, three buckets of scree soaked to get the booger clay loose. pulled sample off the lower left blue bucket. you can see what is left of a muffin ingot pan that i THOUGHT was aluminum in upper right corner. took an hour to get all the ingots out. I will dump them to dry for a few days. (I know i could have skipped the washing part)



The semi washed sample pan o' lead ore



picked over sample pic 1 - bowl of good stuff, basket of rocks and sticks and pieces of clay pigeons with a little pile of leadless bullet jackets in between. I'm surprised how light the pile of jackets was



picked over sample pic # 2- still all looks the same doesn't it?



weighed rocks, weighed lead

rocks- 2.5 lbs

lead- 14 lbs


With that ratio i won't pick another ferkin rock out of the mix unless it's floating

[BOOM BOOM]

HI,
I posted my campimg /campfire methode on the other thread. it works for me.

[Bob Jones]

As an alternative, look around your area for an indoor pistol range. A neighbor of mine owns an indoor range, every week he drops off 200 pounds of range scrap at my driveway to get rid of his "trash". They use steel plates for bullet traps, so it's squashed bullets and jackets, lots of cast bullets, no dirt, rocks or rubber. Melts down real nice, and they just use a broom to sweep it up off the concrete floor.

[leftiye]

You could get a pan, and sluice box. Ever tried air panning?

[truckjohn]

Ok, I ran an alloy analysis on my "Smelted" range lead.
0.25% Sn
0% Sb
0% As
0% Zn
0.008% Ca
0.015% Cu

In other words..... essentially pure lead.

The high Copper is probably from cooking it so long on the turkey fryer base with the jackets, dirt,and rocks.

I resmelted it last night and got another 1.5 lb of dross out of the 20 lbs -- so I am down to 19 lbs of actual lead from 30 lbs of "Ore."

I casted a bunch of 45 ACP slugs last night out of it before I did the alloy test today.....
Casted *Exactly* like pure lead -- Doesn't fill out or flow right unless it is HOT, bullets are *very* shiny and sooooft.....

Have a good one

John

[cohutt]

Got back from vacation saturday to find the pile of dusty berm diggings still in the way....

Heat index here was around 100 with the humidity @ 90%+, so I figured I’d do something smart like smelt the pile of berm bounty right next to my AC’s fan unit……

5:15, piled the big dutch oven full and cranked up the heat.



OK, have some patience it has only been 15 minutes



Seems hot enough



Now I know for certain thatI should have started a melt slowly and added a shovel full every now and then as I went along



A little stirring and it appears that the lead has vacated the jackets and it is time to sift skim and really enjoy the uncomfortable temperature of my smelting area.

[cohutt]

I knew there was some lead somewhere under there….



Another couple of shovels into it and more nice yellow rancid smoke from the pieces of clay pigeons



Ok some progress, finally getting some momentum here



Last of the berm debris has finally been added and cooked out…



Finally, a nice pool of lead- 5-6 inches deep in a 20 qt dutch oven:

[cohutt]

Wax and crushed walnut flux x 3




Mmmmmmmm……… lead…. (Finally ready to pour at 8:00)




Some ingots at last



Thinking of loading up some of these 35,000 grain hollow points, gotta get a 650mm gun made first though….



Filled a 40lb kitty litter container with ingots, maybe 200lbs, maybe more, maybe not.

Worth it?
Yes, now that I have the ingots.

Do it again?

Doubt it (at least until I forget about how much work it was)

[pjh421]

Cohutt,

I used to do that too in order to form an adjunct to my WW supply. If I may make an observation, it looks like you are doing way too much prep work.

As soon as the sifting was done and the range gold had been dumped into the back of my Ranger, it got a bath at the local car wash. The next day, after an impromptu drying in the sun, it was shoveled trash and all into the dutch oven. You'll get a bit more smoke but the trash floats and the lead sinks. Flux with Marvelux (or your fav), skim, stir hard with some more flux (scraping the bottom and sides) & then pour ingots.

Paul