I cannot not seem to find any lead. Well any for a reasonable price. What should I pay and where can I find it? Seems out here that lead is getting scare and old sources like batteries and wheel weights are drying up. Help!

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Fortunately I have a enough wheel weights to hold me several years. I know several guys that make a living in scrap metals, they funnel reloadable cases and lead my dirrection. If I didn't have those sources it would be a matter of buying it retail.

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I asked someone the other day where I could find some lead. My wife told me to look in the seat of my pants. Woman thinks she is funny.

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Scrap yards will usually sell it at what ever the current price is. Seems like I have bought some recently for 65cents per pound.

Seems like prices at scrap yards are running $1/lb or less depending on where you look. Have to make sure they're not melting lead and zinc WW together. There are other sources such as lead pipe, roof jacks, etc., put an ad on Craigslist. Rotometals.com prices are not that bad. You did mention batteries as a source. DO NOT, EVER melt down batteries as a source of lead. Melting down such lead releases two gases, Arsine and Stibine which are uniformly fatal when inhaled even in fairly small quantities. Good luck in your search. Goat

I have gotten a lot of lead back from where I shoot. Pick the bullets out of the berm, melt down and reuse. Jacketed or cast, it all works once you remelt it.

Those medical isotope containers are good to go. I have a few of the 31.5# cores. They cast very similar to wheel weights.

Are you on the castboolit forum? They have lead go up for sale in their swappin and sellin forum. Typical price for clean ingots is around $1/lb shipped to your door.

i found a place in buffalo N.Y. on line with good prices

also if you go see a few local plumbers lots of time they get lead pipe from old buildings
and also roofers get alot of flashing

Roofers will save you lead pipe flashing for a case of beer. It took me one year of recovering all the lead the company demoed to smelt down 400 pounds of lead.

It will be incredibly dirty as it will come off predominantly flat roofs with epdm or asphalt membranes and they'll just want to cut out around them, and rip them up and toss them off the roof. It's all about speed after all.

You'll have to peel the big stuff off as it's a pain to burn off when you're melting it down for ingots and much easier to peel off than skim FOREVER.
Now if I can just find a decent source up here for 50/50 bar solder.

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The last 5 gallon buckets of wheel weights I gave $20 each for and that was the last my "supplier" would sell me. In them were several of the new wheel weights, what ever thay are made of and I found that they (the new wheel weights) don't melt whan making making ingots at least with my "smelting" set-up.

I haven't been to the local scrap yard to see what they are charging (although I will stop in and see) as my 600 pound supply of wheel weights should last me a while yet.

RJ

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RJ,
Those wheel weights that won't melt no matter what are probably steel.
The bad ones that you can melt when cleaning up wheel weights are zinc.
Keep your lead pot below (725 degrees?) and the zinc-ers will float to the top with the steel weights & clips.
..

Of course, being retired, I've got time to blow, but I sit on the tailgate and go thru the whole bucketful testing with a pair of electrician's pliers. The soft ones I keep, hard ones go to the scrapper, no problems with contamination at all. GW

Being a newbie to casting are you saying that if you keep you lead pot below 725 degrees will cause any zinc or whatever to float and once you skim them off, you will wind up with pure lead???

Not pure lead Edmehlig, but an alloy containing lead, tin, and antimony. Wheel weights are an alloy consisting of these metals which makes it cast better and is harder than pure lead. Pure lead is too soft for use for anything other than black powder loads.

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The new wheel weights are pretty easy to spot as they have a different "feel" to them. Like goat, I up-end a bucket (ok 1/4 of a bucket)



on the work bench and sort through them, removing valve stems, valve cores, caps and any other junk before I "smelt" the lead in my forge. You'll notice I have one of 't missus' best Revere Wear sauce pans for a pot.



And pour the good stuff in my premier ingot molds



notice the combination ladle and dross skimmer?



RJ

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Keep your powder dry and when you go afield take the kids and please..........wear your seat belts.
I am the ORIGINAL recoil junky, often imitated, but never equalled.
Proud Father of a SoldierMedic in The 82nd Airborne 325thAIR White Falcons
IUOE Local #9

Another place to get wheel weights is from all your neighbors tires. Just kidding I was in the pipeline construction trade for the last 26 yrs, While trenching I use to run across abandoned lead water pipe. I have about 500# of it and still have about 200# of wheel weights. At one time when I was a youngster working in the cannery's they closed our label print shop. I was able to help them get rid of about 100# of Linotype bars.
Sorry for the ramble.

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Ramble my ear, you were braggin'!! And fortunate!

RJ

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Keep your powder dry and when you go afield take the kids and please..........wear your seat belts.
I am the ORIGINAL recoil junky, often imitated, but never equalled.
Proud Father of a SoldierMedic in The 82nd Airborne 325thAIR White Falcons
IUOE Local #9

LOL.... that's the way i had it figured....

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Are fishing sinkers useable? A few years ago I asked a few metro parks departments if they would mind if I used a metal detector along the shores of their lakes when the water was low. I told them I would remove the lead sinkers that might contaminate the water supply and all agreed. I now have more lead sinkers than I'll ever use -don't fish much anymore - almost never with sinkers.

Rj did you make that ingot mold I have one that I made that looks almost identical to yours


Irv I have used old sinkers to cast with I noticed most are dead soft but some are harder

I am a Plummer so I have all access to all sorts of lead and solder wire so I am lucky then I just use a little shot and alloy it to ww for most of my bullets

No Brag Just Fact.
Seriously though I have found that it's easier to get wheel weights from the smaller independent tire shops, Seems like the bigger chain stores have a contract with somebody.

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