It was a nice spring evening. So I sat out and sorted through my skimming from my first berm mine.
Got permission to get in an old dirt berm. (Private). Used to be used for defense classes or something I am told. Plenty in there.
Things I learned.
1). Staples are not enough to hold hardware cloth to 2x4. Have fitted metal supports now.
2). Harder work/effort than wheel weights. My berm came out with mostly full (non-broken) bullets.
3). Start the top of the smelt on fire. Speeds things up and saves propane. Paraffin wax helped tremendously. Learned this on my second half of the cool.
4). Flux... a lot. Then scrape some more. And scrape again. I had a ton of dirt/dust had to come off the top. The wood chips that came from the dirt were helpful here
5). After my melt. I went back through after screening my dross. Pulled out better than 10 pounds of full jacketed or Plated bullets. Jury is out if this was worth it. I guess depends if I get access to berm again.
6). It was fun. But very hard work. Probably >6-8 hrs work all said into my smelt by time I am finished. I did it for the experience of having done it. (Why we do any of this isn't it?).
Some pics.
Probably equivalent to 3-4 5g buckets?
50x 2# muffins. Estimate an additional 50# left
'Rescued bullets and lead containing dross from smelt yielding first 100# of ingots. Totaled just over 10#. My postage scale stops at 10.
Mystery projectile. Found 5 of them. Anyone know what these are ? They have center strands with a helix around them.
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