As a bullet caster, my dreaded time approaches!

When collecting or processing range scrap, I have seen plenty of obvious powdery lead oxide (the white stuff) on the surface of older bullets. The "not shiny" dark grey surfaces are also a lead oxide. The dark grey stuff is more firmly attached to the surface, but I am sure some of it gets rubbed off in handling. The scrap that I pick up also has a good bit of dirt mixed in. As the dirt comes from a long established backstop, I am sure there are lead compounds mixed in the the dirt.

Lead oxides and other lead compounds are generally more of a health hazard for ingestion than metallic lead.

As I gather (I scoop and sift) and handle dry range scrap there is a good bit of dust that becomes airborne.

One method to reduce dust exposure is to process the scrap in a wet form to the extent practical. Working wet eliminates dust. Most if the time I work wet as an initial cleaning step to get rid of as much dirt as possible. However, since I let the scrap dry again before the smelting step, I do see dust coming off the dry scrap as I am putting it into the smelting pot.

And then there is the dross and jacket removal. Range scrap smelting requires scooping off a lot of dross and bullet jackets. This step does produce airborne dust.

It seem obvious to me that those of us that process "dirty lead" should be aware of the dust issues and should take appropriate care to minimize our health risks at each step of the process.

AJC1 said:

That's how I get lead most of the time. 38 and 45acp bullets straight one for one. 357 mag bullets get 1/3 of a bar of superhard. I'm still trying to figure out on paper if 45c can be just rmr lead. I'm thinking so.

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I cast primarily 9mm and some light 30-30 plinking bullets and then powder coat them. I do not intentionally alloy the lead to a particular formula. I'll throw some scrap fishing weights or whatever in the mix, but not so much at one time to make much of a difference.

WeekendReloader said:

I cast primarily 9mm and some light 30-30 plinking bullets and then powder coat them. I do not intentionally alloy the lead to a particular formula. I'll throw some scrap fishing weights or whatever in the mix, but not so much at one time to make much of a difference.

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I've had some very small success in 30-30 loads from my cast, but I abandoned that focus when my dad's collection arrived with no good loads documented for any of them. I'll work my way through the lot, and then refocus my efforts on rifle. Powder coat is definitely my way forward for many reasons including not having lead all over my revolvers and hands after shooting. I don't know how much of the mess is lead and how much is lube but it's terrible. I'm not bothered in near the same way in rifle so maybe I should try traditional in rifle????

You can get a set of art pencils pretty cheap to test lead hardness.

Well, I cast in my garage just inside the roll up door, I have a fan inside a window blowing behind me, so most smoke/fumes are pushed out the door. I don't worry so much about myself, but I won't let my kids/grandkids, and now GR grandkids be around when I'm melting. The science says the kids are most vulnerable to lead exposure!

I cast/smelt in the doorway between my garage and an open patio.

Doesn't matter what time of year there is always a breeze to blow away any "funk".

Since Norfolk Southern blew up my front yard last year I'm not sure it matters anymore because the neighbors are used to crap blowing around in the air but it gives me peace of mind.

I'm also lucky in that my wife works for a large car dealership and I get buckets of wheelweights from all the mechanics (including ones that she'd worked with years ago)

I have seven 5gal buckets in my garage now and my wife brought home 3 more last night.

Time for a smelting session!

I rather enjoy what I call the "smelting" process. And I have done a lot of it. I thought I might be different but I see a few others say they enjoy it too! Back around 2017-2018 me and a buddy bought and split 5600+ pounds of sorted wheelweights. I think I sold about 600# of clips to the local scrap yard! I've done a lot both before and after that too.

Before I moved I did it in my shop with a 36" exhaust fan running in the gable end and a 48" shop fan running in the door way. It was easy to stay up wind. My pot would hold 400# of wheelweights if you heaped them up but we usually stayed at 350# or so to have enough to aggressively stir and flux. There is a lot to be said about having a large batch of lead thats all the same! We use 7 or 8 of the Lyman style ingot molds.

I wish I could post pictures. I have some on my phone of me and a buddy doing our years accumulation of scrap like we do once a year.

It amazes me when everything comes floating to the top of the liquid lead.
I really enjoy the process from scrap lead to finished ingots for casting.
I will be picking some more up here shortly and get to processed.
When I process the lead I keep it all Seperated, then mark it and test the hardness.
I like the Lee lead hardness tester, I bought the stand and flash light which make it so much easier to read the scale lines.
If I had to hold that in my hand I'd throw it away.

A couple of years ago I picked up a lot of roofing lead sheets that had a lot of tar on it.
Well that tar got hot and floated to the top and caught on fire, I tried scooping it out and dumbed it of the ground and it was a losing battle.
I threw a bunch of sawdust in and the fire went out and the tar mixed in with the sawdust and got dry and easy to remove from the melted lead.

Y-T71 said:

I cast/smelt in the doorway between my garage and an open patio.

Doesn't matter what time of year there is always a breeze to blow away any "funk".

Since Norfolk Southern blew up my front yard last year I'm not sure it matters anymore because the neighbors are used to crap blowing around in the air but it gives me peace of mind.

I'm also lucky in that my wife works for a large car dealership and I get buckets of wheelweights from all the mechanics (including ones that she'd worked with years ago)

I have seven 5gal buckets in my garage now and my wife brought home 3 more last night.

Time for a smelting session!

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And she cooks and cleans... If she started casting for you, you've go it made.

Highland Lofts said:

It amazes me when everything comes floating to the top of the liquid lead.
I really enjoy the process from scrap lead to finished ingots for casting.
I will be picking some more up here shortly and get to processed.
When I process the lead I keep it all Seperated, then mark it and test the hardness.
I like the Lee lead hardness tester, I bought the stand and flash light which make it so much easier to read the scale lines.
If I had to hold that in my hand I'd throw it away.

A couple of years ago I picked up a lot of roofing lead sheets that had a lot of tar on it.
Well that tar got hot and floated to the top and caught on fire, I tried scooping it out and dumbed it of the ground and it was a losing battle.
I threw a bunch of sawdust in and the fire went out and the tar mixed in with the sawdust and got dry and easy to remove from the melted lead.

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I enjoy this type of recycling.

I've got steel stamps. I mark ingots with W, L, or F for fixtures. I usually throw a pound ingot of W in with a pot of L and then water drop bullets for all hand guns, except black powder and they are pure L. I paint the end of the ingots when I stamp them just to make it quicker to sort but the stamp never wears off.

I like taking something old and useless to most people and making it something I can use. It was better when WW were free or near enough to free. I built that whole stove out of junk and scrap I got free or just traded aluminum cans for it. Only bought the gas for the torch and fuel for the welder. Just makes me grin a little wider with every shot.

I really enjoy taking scrap lead and processing it into a useful product.
I need to hit up the steel yard and get the metal to build a wood fueled stove like you posted.
Wood is free, propane cost money.

I'm wondering if most of us here had parents that grew up during the Depression and are thrifty. I stamp my alloy sources too but for now am not mixing them but only experimenting with various amounts of tin.

As a kid I grew up next to a Navy base, and lived in Navy housing,(off base). There was a retired engineer that lived down the street that welcomed us kids. He would draw out parts to model airplanes on sheets of balsa wood, and send them home with us kids to cut out, and then we would assemble it at his house. Some were more than 7' wingspans, and the later were remote control!
He also would get us to gather lead, and we would cast soldiers with the molds he had, we then painted them. I never thought about it much, but we found lead everywhere, plumbing, roof flashing, I never thought of wheelweights, I guess all we had to do was ask!

At my age (54) my casting days are over. Started in my teens, all the way through college. Then life got in the way and the internet was born. Way too many options online and time is important to me. I’d rather spend my time loading and shooting than minding a melting pot, fluxing and smoking molds. I can order bullets to be delivered to my door nowadays.

Enjoy it while you have the time. It can be an addiction.

Worked through another 5 gallon bucket today. Wound up with about 90 pounds of lead ingots and a 100 pounds of "mixed metals". Wife took a picture when I'd just started a enough fire in the stove to set the pot on it. Used up about 3/4 of that wood pile you see there between the stove and the bench behind it.

Metal bucket right next to throw the sorted out valve stems and trash and then the metal clips and dross. Took me about 4-5 hours from the time I lit the fire to when I was putting all the tools back in the lawn wagon to go back to the barn. It was pretty windy today and it kinda surprised me how well the stove worked out, I never could have worked this today just on the campfire.

Put a "little" candle wax in there yesterday just to get a good picture. Wife said it was pretty impressive. LOL

The last time I processed a batch of scrap lead my dog shook his slobbery muzzle off next to me. Yep, a drop of slobber hit the molten lead and it splattered all over me. Fortunately, I only got a couple small burns on my wrist and shiny flecks on my shirt. Dog gets the kennel when I melt lead now.
Be careful y'all.

Here are a couple pictures of my source. We have 22 shooting lanes here and from the front of the bench to the berm is 35yds. I have free access to this berm. Just wish I had a picture up close of this berm! So ripe there is no digging needed.

results of my mining! Last outing I recovered a gross of 187lbs and that only took about 40min.

splattergun said:

The last time I processed a batch of scrap lead my dog shook his slobbery muzzle off next to me. Yep, a drop of slobber hit the molten lead and it splattered all over me. Fortunately, I only got a couple small burns on my wrist and shiny flecks on my shirt. Dog gets the kennel when I melt lead now.
Be careful y'all.

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Started raining on me today just as I got the pot full all the way to the top... never poured ingots that fast before.

Soon as I got the pot pretty clean, it quit raining. I THINK I've got all of my wheel weights processed. I hope I never see another one. The pure, soft lead should all be a LOT less work. My wife is getting wore out keeping up with all the firewood and stamping and painting those ingots.

Just giving up on making ingot molds and using Dollar store cupcake pans and all that is one of the best things I've cave in and just spent the money to get the thing I really needed. Now I've got three of the Lee ingot molds. Just enough, nothing extra, works right every time and every pour comes out the same. Tight as I am, I hate to admit it but I'm not recommending anything else any more. Going cheap was and expensive waste on that part. Just buy the ingot molds to start with from the beginning and you'll never be sorry.

I used the 1# ingot molds for years, I have about a dozen from all makes, but then I managed to find a mold that makes 3# ingots, it really makes things a lot easier! Now I wish I had another!

I've got a few of the 1 pound ingot molds. If a fella has only a few hundred pounds of lead, that's the cheapest way to go.

I started out with molds homemade with angle iron that threw about 2.5 lbs each. I moved to the one pounders which stacked easier, but it's a hassle pouring so many.

I eventually settled on the Redneck Gold molds from the guy on Cast Boolits. It's actually the first order, when he originally had them in two flavors: I have the Cast Boolit molds. 8 of them. When one is pouring a couple hundred pounds, more is better.

These make a 2.5 lb (nominal) ingot, sort of rectangular. Easy stacking, and I don't have to pour a zillion of them.

I really like my Lodge mini cake cast iron pans that I got.

They're not that expensive, maybe $35 ea? I got a few of them on sale at one time. They have 7 cake cavities and each cavity can pour an ingot about 3lbs if you fill it all the way up. They're round and fit perfectly in my RCBS Promelt2 even with the bottom pour rod and arm. Makes for easy melting in the pot when it's time to load it up or top off.

Round might not be the most space efficient shape but they stack well just the same. Besides, I'm only processing what I plan to cast that season, so they don't have to hang around very long, just a few months in my casting cabinet out in the shed.

Having 3 in rotation gets ingots poured plenty fast. And being cast iron, they're going to last until I can't cast anymore, which I don't suspect will be for at least 30 years.

Thanks for the tip on the "Redneck" molds, I sent him a PM on Cast Boolits, maybe he'll sell me a couple!