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Posted: 4/8/2013 8:36:23 AM EDT
| I have a question. When using range recovered lead will there be a problem with smelting not knowing if there is lead free and bimetal and regular bullets. |
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Quoted: Just watch your temps when you melt it down. Don't let the melt get much over 720 to prevent any zinc from melting. (no clue if anyone makes bullets out of zinc) Anything else (copper,etc) is going to melt much higher temp so no worries. +1 lead will melt everything else will float on top. Skim off the junk. Flux to clean the melt, pour into ingots. This lead will work as is for pistol bullets if velocities are kept below 1000 fps, proper lube is used, and bullet sized properly for your pistols bore. |
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I recovered backstop lead a few times. Strangely enough a lot of the jackets that floated to the top would stick to a magnet. I was getting giddy about all the brass and copper I was going to be able to take to the recycling center. My guess is that some imported ammo, Wolf maybe, has a copper washed steel jacket.
I have also recovered a bunch of bullets for dirt back berms. The small mom and pop hardware stores will have the 1/8" screen. I built a frame out of 1X4's, then stapled that mesh to it. I'd load up a shovel full of dry dirt/bullets or two shovel fulls, pick up the frame and shake it back and forth. The dirt drops through and the bullits stay inside the frame. Most of the bullits from the indoor range were jacketed. The outdoor range had almost all cast boolits. I have never taken the time to buy tin or whatever other metals to alloy with. I water quench. Then later on I used my highly technically and accurately calibrated thumbnail test to check for hardness. |
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Quoted:
I have also recovered a bunch of bullets for dirt back berms. The small mom and pop hardware stores will have the 1/8" screen. I built a frame out of 1X4's, then stapled that mesh to it. I'd load up a shovel full of dry dirt/bullets or two shovel fulls, pick up the frame and shake it back and forth. The dirt drops through and the bullits stay inside the frame. This is how I also mine the berm where I shoot. There is very little jacketed bullets fired there and my range scrap runs about 11 Brinell. This works great in 45 ACP, 45 Colt and 38 Special casting |
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Quoted:
I find range lead to be hard. I alloy it 1 to 2 with pure lead when casting. Me too. I know most folks thing of range scrap as soft, like bullet cores or .22 RF bullets, but evidently there's quite a bit of commercial cast bullets, which are usually hard, fired at ranges too. |
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I was just sampling the berm today and saw a bunch of .40 cal bullets that seemed light. Sure enough with a pair of cutters they don't cut in half they snap in half. They're the sintered Sn-Cu stuff. They all seem to rise to the surface of the berm as they're light for volume.
I'll have to grab a few and test one in a small pot to see what temp it might melt at. I was simply saddened to see what looked like a lot of easy get-able bullets right on the surface are of no use to me. Fortunately I'd did see a fair amount of 12 ga slugs sitting around. I have to finish my screen box. |
| Nope, I don't wear a mask when mining berms, the wind always seems to be blowing, so I don't see it being an issue, even if the wind wasn't blowing. I don't sift either, I just go out after it rains and pick it up off the surface, sometimes I'll poke around. I might sift if I were to go to a honey-hole. |
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Yeah, it depends on the wind for me too. If it is nice and windy and the mosquitos aren't biting I'll do it right there at base of the berm. If it is still and real muggy, I have several bucket loads I will take to the car wash to hose off first. Then shake back home. Or start with a cold dutch oven and fire up the turkey fryer, which in the process of reaching 700 degrees F boils any remaining water off first.
The backstop I was mining had lots of sand and bowling pin parts of wood and plastic. I rigged up a mesh ramp about 8 foot long. I zip tied my sawzal to it, then put a zip tie to the sawzall's trigger. I would dump in like a quarter of a bucket of sand, bullets, wood splinters, and plastic fragments at the top of the ramp. Then plug in the sawzall. It would vibrate enough that the stuff would slowly scoot down the ramp and the crap would fall through the mesh. Then I could walk away for a while. What made it to the bottom fell into a big rubbermaid tub. I filled that with water, and that got some of the wood splinters to float to the top. I'd skim those off. It was quite the redneck engineering project. 
I did learn my lesson though. When using plastic 5 gallon buckets to carry lead, only fill the bucket half way. One bucket's handle pulled through the plastic. If it would have landed on foot, it would have broken it. Then so much for any money saved shooting cast boolits. |
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Quoted:
Quoted:
I find range lead to be hard. I alloy it 1 to 2 with pure lead when casting. Me too. I know most folks thing of range scrap as soft, like bullet cores or .22 RF bullets, but evidently there's quite a bit of commercial cast bullets, which are usually hard, fired at ranges too. Commercial cast bullets are generally quite hard. I have read and agree that they are made like that because most folks insist that harder is better but I find that commercial cast only work well for quite hot loads like 44mag and full 357 mag loads.Most other pistol loads actually work better with slightly softer lead. For small amounts a hand held screen box works ok but if one has larger amounts it pays to build a larger screen (say 18 " wide and 5' long. leave one end on the ground and prop the other end up so the whole thing is on a 45 degree angle. Shovel the dirt - lead mix onto the high end and everything will tumble down the slope with most of the fine dirt falling through the screen with bigger chunks of lead more or less in a pile at the bottom of the ramp. before smelting let the mostly lead dry well in the sun, one drop of water into melted lead causes lots of steam and will blow hot lead all over the place |
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Quoted:
bullet core is usally pure lead. very soft. i would put it in ingots and then use a lead hardner and find its hardness. I've been shooting nothing but range scrap from a couple of different indoor ranges for a long time now. My scrap measures 12 - 14bhn air cooled and 20-24bhn water dropped. This is based on samples pulled from many different buckets collected over a better than 7 year span. The conventional wisdom of range scrap being almost pure soft lead doesn't match my experience at all. |
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Quoted:
I have been out after a rain with no mask. Easy pickins... I guess I was asking the guys who sift if they wear a mask when mining. jonblack I was told years ago by a guy who designs ranges for a living that lead contanimating the ground water is based on the alkalinity of the soil. I guess given the right soil conditions, a lead boolit just forms a white oxide "shell" and no further leaching into the soil occurs. |
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Quoted:
So if i heat just hot enough to get it to melt, all the crap should float to the top. I have not melted any yet still collecting from an indoor range. Gonna buy a magic chef single burner to smelt it down. yep with range scrap but not if you get a bucket of wheel weights. You got to keep the heat down in case you miss a zinc weight. 
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| Range scrap gets melted in my 40 lb pot, over a old Coleman cook stove. Flux & make ingots. Ok as is for me. http://www.lasc.us/IndexBrennan.htm |
| If I have wheelweights, I try to cut each one with some lineman's pliers, aka kleins, aka dikes, or I have an old carving knife I used to carve duck decoys with. If either one cuts it real easy, it's lead and goes into the dutch oven. I don't care about having frosted looking boolits. But by that time everything has already been rendered into clean ingots. |
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