Interesting day today...got to smelt!

[JWFilips]

I have been wanting awhile now to smelt the range lead I have collected over the past 2 years. I try to make it a point to pick the berms with my shooting buddy Ed, every time we go to the range. Our range opens for shooting at 8 am 7 days a week ..so we get there early to get good tables and set up and spend the rest of the time until shooting hours walking the berms and picking what we can. I like to at least get the weight of what I shoot each trip...but most times it is a good bit more! (I have 300 lbs of range lead in kitty litter containers taking up space in my basement) Well since it has been down right beautiful weather here in NEPA all this November & My leaves are cleaned up and things are batten down for the upcoming winter; I told my wife that I would like to try to smelt some of my cache.

Anal that I am; i started picking though the buckets to sort out all the commercial "hard cast" from the jacketed stuff! I guess my wife felt sorry for me and sat down with me and we sorted about 1/2 of what I had this morning. By the time I hauled all of my smelting stuff up the hill behind the house ( far enough so no one would think I had a House fire) it was pretty late in the day but I was able to Clean smelt 100 lbs of the commercial hard cast bullets! Had to leave everything up there because it started getting too dark; figure I will try again tomorrow!
After supper we sorted the rest so I have another 60 lbs of Commercial hard cast to go along with 150 lbs of jacketed. With luck I should have it all done before dark tomorrow.

Why do I like to sort?
Well, this way I get two "almost known" alloys. Commercial cast is most often BHN 18 as cast
The jacketed stuff is pretty soft at about 9 BHN ( at least this is what I have seen in the past) For me it just seems easier to blend the two alloys then to smelt it all together and get pot luck!

 

[Brad]

I don't sort mine at all. I figure that over time it all averages out. If I want a more consistent mix I take each pot of mixed scrap and keep the ingots in a pile. Once I have 5 piles I take an even number of ingots from each pile and remelt them together. This makes the subsequent I gots an average of the original 5 pots. This is a pretty easy way for me to get 150-200 ponds of pretty similar ingots.

What are you doing with the jackets? I took some to a scrap yard but they gave me next to nothing for them. I don't plan to mess with them in the future and will just dump them in with my other recyclables.

You are fortunate to have a wife who helps with that stuff. I don't know that mine has the patience for that.

 

[JWFilips]

You should see her when I have to sort Range brass! Seriously, she loves solving puzzles I think that has something to do with it!
Well after 38 years of being married to me...It is what i like to call our bonding time!

I give the jackets to my son But he get dirty copper prices for them! I told him next time I'm going to cirtic acid wash all of them to get them shiny bright!
Maybe that will help

 

[Brad]

I would be happy with 50 cents a pound. I got 11 cents a pound. I had over 200 pounds and didn't get 30 bucks for it.
I need to find a scrapper and offer them 50% if they can get better money for the jackets. I have almost 3 full five gallon buckets of them right now.

 

[JonB]

My metals scrapper is small time, it's his hobby (and has a full time job at the canning plant), I buy all the different lead he scrounges and last time I had misc dirty copper/brass and a bucket of copper bullet jackets, he gave me 90¢ a lb, which paid for part of the lead he sold me. He also will buy the steel clips from COWW, not very much, but it's something along with the various other scrap steel and cast iron from my random projects. Last time we talked, I asked him about spent primers, he said as long as a magnet won't pick them up, he'll mix them in with other brass when he sells to a smelter...so I'm assuming he'll pay near the brass price, which no doubt is low right now.

 

[KHornet]

Mining bullets, smelting them, etc, is just another phase of the addiction we casters have gotten into. Will probably smelt next spring!

 

[Brad]

Jon, that is the kind of guy I'm looking for. Not a scrap yard but one of those guys who drives around and picks up scrap metal to seel to scrap yard. I figure they know how to get the most bang for the buck at the scrap yard.

I have almost 6 full five gallon buckets that need to be melted. I can do 2 buckets in a long afternoon when the mood strikes me. I figure each bucket will yield 150-175 pounds of nice clean lead.

 

[JWFilips]

Well, Today was cold & windy but decided to finish up. i know you guys like pictures so I took this While my Jacketed stuff was heating up. These are all from our hand sorted "commercial cast" range scrap smelt yesterday. Glad the squirrels didn't carry them off overnight!
Today was just the jacketed stuff.
When I finally packed it all in and put the ingots up in my basement....I found another 100 lb bucket that was hiding! Arrugh!

 

[Brad]

Your squirrels must be larger than ours!

That should keep you going for a bit. I hate smelting on windy days. I haven't made a windbreak for my turkey fryer and it does take longer when it is blowing.

 

[JWFilips]

The Jacketed took very long to start melting. I did finally gerri rig a piece of 1/2 plywood to keep the flame vertical... that Helped.
The squirrels ...well they are neighborhood fed....As to the Pilgrims; if they had these around it would have changed the way we eat at Thanksgiving Day for sure!

 

[Ian]

I love Squirrels, particularly if slow-cooked in with some bacon-grease dumplings and lots of fresh-cracked black pepper.

A length of rolled roof flashing wrapped around the burner has worked for me quite well as a wind break when using a turkey fryer setup. Those ingots look really clean, I think range lead is a much better source of bullet metal these days than wheel weights because the wheel weights have so much calcium and aluminum contamination.

 

[RicinYakima]

Ian makes a MAJOR point, in that WW metal is not very good anymore. Had to cast round balls for a flintlock match next week (in the snow!) with salvaged X-ray room shielding. After lots of fluxing and skimming, worked better than most modern WW's for casting ease.

 

[freebullet]

Oo boy I sure wouldn't spend the time sorting. Thanks to Brad I've got a close approximation on the alloy content. I appreciate you sharing your ways with us.

I've been keeping the jackets in buckets till I can get a decent price or at least trade them. With the price of copper it seems they should be worth more.