Home Forums Reloading Bullet Casting Lead Sources

Sailboat keels work for me. Just awkward until you can suspend over a 55 gal barrel of water and hit it with the burner.

Sailboat keels work for me. Just awkward until you can suspend over a 55 gal barrel of water and hit it with the burner.

I could use a good source for soft lead in East Idaho.

Bb

If in the Colorado Springs local, I have couple hundred pounds of lead I could get rid of. At my age, I don't think I will be casting anymore bullets. I also have a Lyman electric pot.

I wish I could take you up on that but I'm too far east of you. I've been getting some in since I made this thread, so I'm not hurting for it like I was.

If any of you guys in Jefferson State need lead, you're welcome to contact me, free to you, 40 miles west of Mt Shasta. I would prefer that you plan to use the lead rather than resell it though.

So now that I am casing bullets for my Springfield Trap door, I need to be casing a 20-1 mix of lead and tin. Local scrap yard did have some lead pipes and roofing sheets. Are the lead pipes normally pure lead?

I'd choose the roofing lead over any pipe if I had the choice. Potential problems with pipe, lots of nasty inside that you'll pay for to get them and extra work to clean when you smelt, and, there could potentially be moisture trapped inside and you WILL get a visit from the Sparkle Fairy if that moisture makes it to your pot.

Neither is a total deal breaker, but just be aware of how to deal with it.

yes they are yes they are

So I melted down the lead roofing sheets. Lots of blues and purples at the surface as I fluxed it and the ingots still have the colors at the surface. I then melted down the sections of lead pipe and there were no colors, just nice shiny lead. The ingots remained shiny silver. Both are finger nail soft and make a dull thunk when dropped. Why the difference in color? What would the lead pipe have in it that would be different? If it had tin in the mix, would that cause it to remain silver? I have them separated, but have at least 50 lbs total.

I had some lead about a year ago that was the same
way. All iridescent and weird.
Trying to make a few round balls, and it wouldn't
pour properly. Soft when cool, but not like
ordinary run-of-the-mill lead you find everywhere
as far as trying to work with it.

Never did find a satisfactory answer, and just
discarded it and moved along

I’ve been using some sheet lead from the X ray wing of a hospital lately and it has the gold to purple sheen on the pot. Cut 50/50 with clip on wheel weights the sheen goes away along with some minor mold fill out issues.

So I have read that higher heat will cause the lead oxides to create the blues and purples. I maintained the same heat from the fead sheeting to the lead pipes and the pipe lead never got the colors.

If that’s the case I’d guess that the pipe or sheeting or both are alloyed with a pinch of something making them behave slightly differently.

I melted down 35 pounds of roof jacks a couple days ago and cast them into ingots. They should have been pure lead, probably, maybe. They exhibited no odd colors but the sheet lead I mentioned earlier does at the same temp. I don’t know 🤷🏼‍♂️