Soft Lead

[Axman]

I picked up some soft lead the other day at the scrapyard.
The guy said it was sheathing over copper wire of some sort.
He shot it with X-ray gun for me.
Idk if the FE is in it or was possibly picked up from junk on surface.

The surface was pretty shiny though.
It’s really soft and bendable and the pcs were about 6” wide flattened out after the wire was taken out.
Thanks
Jim

 

[Axman]

Here is the sheathing.

 

[Spindrift]

Looks like bullet alloy to me!

 

[Tomme boy]

iron came from the file or grinder he used to clean the lead off to shoot it.

 

[Bret4207]

Pretty near pure lead with a touch of antimony and copper, perhaps added at the factory to assist in drawing it out through the dies. I don't know if iron alloys readily with lead, but Tom sounds right on why it shows up.

 

[Snakeoil]

My guess is trace elements from the smelting process. Iron from the crucible, and Sb from a previous melt. The copper is probably from being in contact with the copper wire.

So, the x-ray gun provided the analysis? That's very interesting. Guess I need to learn more about this.

Thanks for sharing.

 

[johnc]

roof jack?

 

[Axman]

From what I was told from the scrap yard it had copper wire in it and was brought in already split open.
The spot he X-Rayed was the inside that was bright and shiny the whole length, as if it had never seen oxidation.
I did some research on web about cable sheathing and learned a lot about the history of it.
In all my 20plus years of lead scrounging I’d never seen it but read about it in old casting articles.

I think the FE is not internal but I’ll know more after I melt up a big batch for ingots and then I’ll have him shoot it again.

 

[Tomme boy]

Its good lead. I had a friend that worked for Centurylink. He supervised the men that replaced the phone lines on the line posts. The lower silver lokking line on the power poles is the lead covered phone line. He would drop off a couple hundred feet of the removed cable.

It was a real pain to process. I had a pvc pipe cutter that was basically like a hedge pruner. I cut it up in 1' sections and would drop them in the propane tank pot I made. I would let it burn till all the paper that was the insulator for each wire burned off. It basically had flux built in. I am surprised it did not show sulfur. Mine always had some in it. You could smell it and see it smoking off.

 

[Kevin Stenberg]

Before I got into this hobby. I stripped and sold many hundreds of pounds of that stuff.

 

[fiver]

when you melt it you'll know.
the rainbow will appear and the ingots will be blue.... Pure.
keep the heat down and don't just go to skimming the top.

run the heat up and keep skimming and you'll end up with an empty pot with no lead to show for the work.
650ish is plenty.

 

[Axman]

I finally got around to smelting up a big batch yesterday.
180 bars @ 6lb avg.
When to scrap yard with an ingot that I scraped clean with a knife and shot it with gumout.
Here is the x-ray gun results.

 

[Dusty Bannister]

Oops, posted question before going back to check the source of your material. Should be very nice to work with.

 

[Snakeoil]

Nice. Wish I had it.

 

[CZ93X62]

Mighty nice Pb right there!

I have no trouble getting 850-900 FPS with #358429 and #358477 cast in unalloyed lead in 357 Magnum. What a shame that I can't use it to hunt with in my home state--The Land Of The Condor Cuddlers.

 

[popper]

Telecom cable sheathing, good stuff.