Lead from indoor range

[Brad]

A few years back Paul bought some scrap from a local indoor range. The range uses steel plates to catch the bullets so the fragments end up being very fine, almost like dust.

How difficult is it going to be to melt this stuff? I see a fair bit of reducing agent being required because of the massive surface area involved. Lots of oxides here.

I plan to have some lead, like scrap bullets, in the bottom for the pot to form a molten pool under the fines. Add heat and let it sit for a while. Will likely add small amounts at a time so it can be fluxed really well to help it melt As it reduces.

suggestions?

 

[Rick]

I don't think you'll have an issue with it, most likely will take some serious fluxing cause who knows what besides dust & dirt was swept up with it but the lead should be fine and melt just fine.

 

[waco]

I have like 150 lbs of indoor .22lr “dust”
Very, very dirty. Lots of dross. In mine anyway. Lots of carpet? And plywood and paper. Once the lead melted I had like three inches of crap on top of the melt. Nice alloy once it was clean.

 

[Ian]

Your plan to get a pool started first and add the dusted stuff to is a good one.

 

[CZ93X62]

That is what I did with a bunch of lead "sawdust" I acquired as casting metal. Also had some cut-off 1" x 4" and 2" x 4" end pieces. I used the end pieces for "pooling", then intro'ed the dust slowly. There was about 8%-10% beach sand in the metal, which floated out with fluxing. The Tijuana "foundry" where the provider got his ingots stiffed him a bit, it was cut-to-fit sailboat ballast. Third World chicanery at its best.

 

[Spindrift]

I recently smelted a couple of buckets with «.22lr dust».
Lesson learned: use proper (respiratory) protective equipment when working with lead dust

I also got a thick layer of junk, with nice alloy below.

Added 2% pewter
- fresh, aircooled bullet BHN 8
-fresh, water quenched bullet BHN 8
- both the above, after 2 weeks: BHN 11-12
- after a month or so, still 11-12-ish

So I’m guessing around 2,5% antimon, and no arsenic. Fills out great (fills both the moulds, and my needs really)

 

[Rick H]

I use indoor range lead all the time. There is a lot of cardboard, paper and dirt but it skims off.

 

[jsizemore]

I got about 3000lbs over a 3 week period from an indoor range. Mostly jacketed pistol was fired. When I went to look at it the first thing I found was a live round around 10 feet in front of the firing line. Range operator told me when he sweep he picked up the live rounds. I search the entire amount before it went in the pot and I never found a live round.

Since it was inside it had little to no oxidation but did have particles from the sweeping. I recovered the jackets when melting but there was a significant amount of copper that was pulverized upon impact with the the steel backstop in the alloy. I need to have it tested but it can't be far from babbit.

 

[358156 hp]

Indoor ranges are where 90% or better of my range scrap came from, so I may be able to help out a bit here. My average recovery from a full 5 gallon bucket of indoor scrap averages right around 100 lbs. Most of the buckets weigh around 125 lb, so be prepared for some waste. Like most guys, I do my melts in a cast iron Dutch Oven over a propane fish cooker. Pretty standard stuff so far. I use a small garden trowel to fill the dutch oven almost to the top. There will be a lot of trapped air in the scrap and after melting your pot will be about 2/3rds full.

I use a surplus military mess hall serving strainer to separate the trash from the lead, you will see what appears to be a lot of dirt in the scrap, a lot of it is actually fused, unburnt powder, and it has never been an issue that I was ever aware of, it has all been inert every time I've done my big melts, but I think it's best you know what it is. This information came to me directly from the owner of one of the local indoor ranges, he was also the guy who swept the floor, cleaned the traps, and carried the heavy buckets out for recycling. I consider him a first hand source of this sort of thing. He said his floors were swept several times a day, range traffic permitting, and there was no way this was ordinary dirt. I tried to light a few samples of it early on and it simply wouldn't ignite. BTW, his floors were the dirtiest after small bore matches, he claimed 22 LR was the biggest offender of all.

Strainer.

The strainer is the cleanest way I've found to separate the trash from the lead, a picture is worth a thousand words, and that certainly holds true here. Just scoop up the jackets and the trash and deposit it in empty metal containers to give to the local hazardous waste disposal amnesty program. You can try to separate the jackets and sell them for scrap, but I've never has any success with that. All mine gets tossed with the dirt. YMMV.

At this point you'll know what to do next, flux the hell out of the remaining lead and don't forget that there will be trash trapped between the bottom of the pot and the lead itself. I usually ladle the clean lead out into ingots, but leave 1/4 inch or so in the pot. I'll let that cool, then remove it later and set it aside for the next time I melt. The piece I saved from the last melt goes on top of the next batch to separate the usable lead from the trash. For that matter, you could also simply pour the last 1/4 inch from the pot into ingots and recycle them that way.

 

[Matt]

The lead I recover from my bullet trap consists of lead “dust”, chunks of lead, jacketed bullets, plated bullets, paper (from targets) , wood chips (from target backer) and dirt. I place all of it in my homemade 100 pound pot (outdoors) turn on the
burner and wait for the melt. I end up with a top layer of bullet jackets, copper fragments, gas checks and dirt. I stir this and start taking ladles full
of jackets. I have my grandfathers divided plumbing
ladle that allows me to pour off the lead and dump the jackets in a coffee can to trade the recycler for lead. After the jackets and copper/ jacket fragments and gas checks are removed I continue to stir the paper and wood into the mix as a flux. I then remove the dross and start pouring ingots. They are pretty clean so I will put them in my casting furnace and flux again with sawdust as I normally do regardless of the source of the alloy.
I do leave a layer of lead in the bottom of the pot because it doesn’t self drain. I’m not sure whether this helps with the melt or not. I routinely drain my two casting furnaces after each use and don’t notice any delay in melting for my next session, but
then again I will clean guns, size cases, or something else waiting for the alloy to melt. A watched furnace never melts!? Below is a typical pot of trap scrap.

 

[Brad]

Here is what I will be dealing with.
It is heavy enough for me to know that the black is not rubber dust or just floor sweepings. Lots of small fragments of jackets and core.

Wonder if any Cu will find a way into the melt?

 

[Ian]

You probably can't get away with it in your neighborhood, Brad, but a half-cup of diesel fuel poured on top and lit off can help reduce and heat the mess. If you don't start off with a puddle of molten alloy you can get into a situation where you have a pot full of hot particulates and molten lead BBs but the BBs won't ever group together. I've had this issue when attempting to melt a big bowl of graphited lead shot. Burning something on the surface puts lots of CO there and sucks off the extra oxygen molecules from the lead oxides, both adding heat and a heavy reducing action. Problem with burning diesel fuel on top is the very oxygen-starved combustion makes a huge plume of black smoke.

 

[Joshua]

When I started casting I only had 40 pounds of fishing weights, and a few handfuls of wheel weights. The Lyman manual said I needed Linotype. So I went looking on EBay!

Edit: My state outlawed lead wheel weights a decade before I started casting. They are hard to come by here.

Ever the cheap skate, I bought twenty-five pounds of Linotype bits, pieces, and Lino sawdust. I googled the company, they are a “real” supplier of type to the letter press cottage industry. So I purchased it.

What arrived was 90% Lino sawdust from their band saw.

After smelting the first time there was a huge pile of black stuff. I skimmed it off and poured my ingots. I don’t remember exactly but it was more than 15 pounds but less than 20 pounds worth of good ingots. I was gonna just bag it up and throw away all that black powder, but I read on the other forum that it you kept at it with the saw dust and lots of wax you could extract more good lead.

So, I threw in ten pounds of soft fishing lead cannonballs and the black stuff. I fluxed and stirred a bunch.

There was still a bunch of junk on the top of the melt when I was done. But that fishing lead/black dust batch acted like Lyman #2 when scratched with artist pencils. So I felt OK about the purchase. It was $2.00 a pound, shipping included.

Was it a lot of work? Yes! Was it a great deal? No! Would I buy Lino or lead saw filings again? No!

But, I’d sure take a bag if it was free!

Live And Learn,
Josh

 

[Ian]

The Lyman manual said I needed Linotype.

I still regard this hogwash as a sin against humanity. Sorry you were another victim.

 

[358156 hp]

I see lino mentioned by Lyman as their recommended alloy a lot anymore. Skeptical me, I wonder if Lyman gets a few more production runs from their mould cherries by spec'ing an alloy that tends to cast a bit on the large side. Most of the complaints on Lyman (and RCBS) moulds seem to revolve around "as cast" bullet diameter. Always too large or too small.

Cut new cherries a bit on the large side and use them longer. If anyone complains, blame their alloy. Sorry guys, you get cynical Bob today. I'm trying to keep it under wraps.

 

[Joshua]

I caught on pretty quick that I didn’t need pure Linotype for my rifles.
What I still need it for is it’s antimony content. Here in the marine environment of Puget Sound I have access to keels, ballast, and fishing lead, along with the occasional roofing or plumbing lead. I’ve been paying anywhere from .40 to .75 cents a pound for this stuff. It’s all pretty low in antimony. This area has a lot of Scandinavian immigrants, which means lots of pewter in the thrift shops. But, lead high in antimony has been more of a mail order thing.

Buying out of state wheel weights is more expensive for me than buying Lino to add to my “soft trash sail boat keel” for rifle stuff. If I’m looking at the percentage of antimony and shipping costs.

For all my pistols, except for .40 s&w, I’ve been using 20:1 keel lead to pewter. It’s my cheapest alloy. Seems to work okay, in .38 special and 45acp.

As, always still figuring it out.
Josh

 

[Brad]

Rotometals super hard is what you need. At 30% Sb it is way better than Linotype for enriching a low Sb alloy.

 

[Ian]

I buy Rotometals Superhard (70% lead/30% antimony) in pellet form to bump the Sb content of rifle alloy as needed. Most of my WW are about 2.5% Sb and I have a large stash of roofing lead scrap and assayed 63/37 solder scrap, so like you the Sb is the thing I'm always lacking. Superhard is expensive but if you figure the percentage vs. shipping it may work in your favor, and you are guaranteed the content. When you buy "linotype", especially nowdays, there's not much chance you're actually getting what you're paying for. If in pig form, lino could be so depleted it might be anything. If recast into ingots, it still could be anything. I have a bucket of monotype letters which are about 8 bhn and a lino pig with the ring on it and everything which made bullets softer than clip on wheelweights and they wouldn't harden as much in the oven.

 

[Ian]

yeah, short version what Brad said.

 

[Kevin Stenberg]

Just a suggestion. When i am separating jackets from melted lead. I use an old french frying basket. I dip the basket into the pot to get the jackets. After i lift the basket above the melt level i shake the basket to remove any lead that is trapped inside the jacket. Which falls back into the pot.
That removes the jackets but not the ash. So i have to use a slotted spoon for that.
Another tip. I have found several very small soup ladles that are only about an inch in dia. I use them in my bottom pour pot to clean the sides of the pot. Any scrappings from the pot sides are lifted to the top of the melted lead.