Home Forums Reloading Bullet Casting Hospital lead?

Friend, who works as a Xray lab tech, called me and said "come and get it!" Any ideas what i have here?

My guess since you got them from an x-ray tech is that they are radiation source containers. Got a geiger counter handy?

Yup. Shipping containers for radioactive medicines. No worries about leftover radiation. Grab all you can.

https://www.24hourcampfire.com/ubbt...492/re-how-do-you-find-lead#Post13638492

What about the 3, HUGE, cylinders in the other box? Must be 20 lbs each.

I bought a few of the large containers, but shaped differently than those. Tapered base with a small knob on top. Called isotop containers.Weighed about 32 lbs apiece, with a small brass threaded nut cast into them. Alloy was 1%Sn, 3%Sb, the rest pure lead.
Some of the smaller variety are supposed to run 2.5%Sn,2.5%$Sb.
Easiest way to find out is have them tested with an XRF gun at a salvage yard. Some places will test for free if you're buying or selling something, others have a fee. Not all are calibrated that well though.

Another source for X-ray lead is a high volume dental office. The stuff they use is small and thin, like a large band-aid. My dentist saved them for me and when I got a whole big box full hoarded I melted them down. Yield was only a couple ingots so I gave up that pursuit.

My sister is a Radiologist and I've bugged her for those old isotope containers but her office has a policy that forbids them giving them away like that. Grrr.

yep i've seen such many times when we had mobile nuclear medicine. they transport the radiation doses in those super dense lead containers as to not get radiated themselves just transporting it.
Big Ed

If you are going to get a steady supply of these and want to make sure for yourself : https://www.pce-instruments.com/us/...-det_976415.htm?_list=kat&_listpos=8

These run about $135 each.

Unless you are dealing with the more dangerous stuff, that's a bit of overkill.

https://hps.org/publicinformation/ate/q11137.html

Google "felling family.net/isolead " for more info. I has a source for these at one time and they make fine pistol bullets. Its good clean lead too.

Good info, thanks, I carried one at work for a few years, In part for the old Hunters Point Navy Shipyard might have had some residual contamination, and in part for anti-terrorism duties. for cautions sake I did check every piece of lead container from medical sources and all were clean.

Over the 8.5 years I worked at the local hospital I accumulated about 3200 pounds of lead. The piston
Looking cylinders look like counter weights from old
Portable c arm xray machines.

I'm wondering if you just wound an animal with bullets made of this lead, will it get cancer and die anyway in a couple of years....

No. In essence, lead absorbs but does not let go. Not with the low level stuff.

That's a lot of lead! Thinking about casting all that makes my back hurt.

Maybe if you found lead that was "hot" enough, you'd have tracers without any additional ingredients or steps.

I was thinking you had obtained lead from the surgical removal from patient's posterior.

As in

"Get the lead outtya ass!"

We salvage a bunch of lead sheets out of old x-ray tables. They were in bars about 4" wide 1/2" thick and the width of the table, they were in staggered layers. We got quite a haul, we were demoing an old TB sanitarium.

Not into it.

I bought all the lead pigs from an old print shop a few years ago. I gave about 700 pounds to a friend who wanted to case 300 BO bullets. I still haven't cast any yet because we built a new home and moved and I haven't set my stuff up.

I took a 22# pig to a scrap yard and had it tested with a Xray gun. It was only about 70% lead and the rest was tin and antimony. My friend said he had to mix a lot of pure lead with it to soften it up a bit. I need to find a source for pure lead and get casting. I've got pigs of that stuff stacked all over my garage. It sucked moving it.

I'm looking forward to.learning to.powder coat bullets. I always hated traditional bullet lubes.

Bb

Radioisotope containers. I shot a ton of it in my old musket competition days. Pure and as soft as it can get. Wont be radioactive but wash your hands well with soap and cold water after handling it.

What you have sounds like pigs of linotype... worth twice as much or more than soft lead and getting more difficult to find as time goes on other than purchasing from Rotometals.

Go to Castboolets... there is a forum on powder coating and the lead forum has info on lino.

I make 94-3-3 alloy using 8 parts range scrap, 2 parts lino and .45 parts 50/50 solder. There is a formula for making Hardball alloy using 1 part lino and 1 part soft, iirc.

Friend who works is a Rad Tech gets me a bunch of these. Haven't used they yet, preferring to wait until I have a bunch more. Will have to figure out how to remove the plastic (?) casing before smelting.

I have bought a lot of the smaller ones.

They when melted make some real nice 45 ACP and other bullets without adding anything else to the mix.

The ones i got were not that hard to make them usable for rifle as well as magnum cartridges.

Back then i got them for a dollar a pound.

It emits the energy as heat for the most part.

Nothign to worry about at medical levels.

Spent some time today teaching a friend to separate his wheel weights, smelt them down and pour them into ingots. Once we finished that we discovered a way to get the blue plastic covers off the isotope containers and smelt them down into ingots along with those huge isotope containers. Got some 100 lbs of ingots today. Maybe next week i'll cast up some pure slugs and test them on my LBT hardness tester to see what the BHN comes out at.

Looks like a good setup for your casting. I would like to get a source of lead like that. Be Well, Rustyzipper.