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Scored a few pounds of lead


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That pic was right after I unloaded it here at home. The barrel was on a pallet in an industrial yard in Great Falls, we set it on a trailer with a forklift, tied it down, I drove back to Helena, and unloaded it with my skid steer forks. :) About all a New Holland L555 will pick up without the counterweights mounted!

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This appears to be one of the smaller chunks, but still a hundred pounds or more judging by the effort needed to move it from the barrel onto the table two feet away. 

LeadChunk.jpg

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I used to use a plumbers pot to do the initial melt, skim ww clips and get the alloy sorta correct, from there to biscuit tins for about one and a half pound ingots. That made it much easier to transport to my bullet caster. Now I just buy bullets, I have gotten older and much lazier.

 

Imis

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The older I get, the more I buy instead of cast, but there are a few I use that just aren't available, too expensive, or are cast to a specific weight from cut-down molds to get point of impact to match point of aim.

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One use would be casting .243 for plinkers.
Apparently, nobody makes Hi-Tek lead bullets in .243.
Pity.

Kudos on your fine score.
I have a feeling that lead will soon become Unobtanium, like so may other materials.

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First, it's not nearly as dry out as it looks - there was still patchy snow on the ground when I took the pic. ;)

 

I use this to reclaim the bullets from my backstop logs. Toss 'em in, fire 'em up, and pretty soon lead starts running out of a hole in the bottom. I expect a propane bottle and weed burner would work fine, or maybe just a good campfire underneath, and then rig up a runner from a short piece of angle iron to some ingot molds.

Maybe I'll pull the wood splitter up to the house and see if there's any chance it will work at all.

 

I worked 23 years at an ASARCO lead smelter where we had huge lead kettles that held 120-140 tons of lead which was then cast into ten 10 ton pigs for shipment in railcars to another facility for further refinement to remove the gold & silver. We would process and ship in excess of 200 tons of lead bullion daily. 

Smelter 004.jpg

Woodsplitter.jpg

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3 hours ago, Three Foot Johnson said:

This appears to be one of the smaller chunks, but still a hundred pounds or more judging by the effort needed to move it from the barrel onto the table two feet away. 

LeadChunk.jpg

 

and I'm off down a rabbit hole:

have the same RCBS Pro Melt.  changed the linkage so the handle pulls down to open.  much easier on my twice-repaired shoulder.  

Will say it relies on a spring rather than gravity to keep the lead from leaking out the pot.  I put two springs, one inside the other to add a measure of safety

 

 

 

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26 minutes ago, Three Foot Johnson said:

Best description would be a heavy equipment repair and salvage yard. These chunks are a sheared up counterweight.

 

Wow.  I have SOOOO many questions.  But, just a couple.  What needs 2000# of counterweight?  What did they use to "shear" it into pieces?

That's a huge chunk of lead.  I think I need to step up my search for scrap lead.

 

Angus

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39 minutes ago, Black Angus McPherson said:

I think I need to step up my search for scrap lead.

 

Finding scrap lead is not that difficult.  Finding lead without a lot of contamination is more difficult.   Finding soft, pure lead for making balls for cap guns is much more difficult.  

 

Maybe try Alen T. Lynn in Bowling Green?

 

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1 hour ago, Black Angus McPherson said:

 

Wow.  I have SOOOO many questions.  But, just a couple.  What needs 2000# of counterweight?  What did they use to "shear" it into pieces?

That's a huge chunk of lead.  I think I need to step up my search for scrap lead.

 

Angus

Boom mounted hydraulic shears are used in every recycling yard around. Some are big enough to pick up and go to town on a complete CAT crawler, no prior disassembly required. :blink: 

Where this piece came from, who knows - maybe a mobile crane or somesuch. Even my little New Holland L555 skid steer uses four 65 pound counterweights if I have something heavy to move - 260 pounds. Iron, not lead though.

 

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4 hours ago, Three Foot Johnson said:

Boom mounted hydraulic shears are used in every recycling yard around. Some are big enough to pick up and go to town on a complete CAT crawler, no prior disassembly required. :blink: 

Where this piece came from, who knows - maybe a mobile crane or somesuch. Even my little New Holland L555 skid steer uses four 65 pound counterweights if I have something heavy to move - 260 pounds. Iron, not lead though.

 

 

 

:o:o  Wow!!  Like Godzilla playing with the cross town bus.

 

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