Lead from indoor range

Tomme boy

Well-Known Member
One thing you will never run into a 50cal. spotter tracer round using indoor lead like I did from the range scrap I was mining from my local range. It went off when I was about 15' away. Blew half the lead out of my pot.
 

RicinYakima

High Steppes of Eastern Washington
Linotype has only two uses. For beginners, you can cast pretty bullets with no skill. I think this is what Lyman wants you to do. Second, match shooters can cast physically identical bullets as to weight and composition that can later be manipulated into a match bullet.
 

burbank.jung

Active Member
I acquired a few hundred pounds of lead from an indoor range that fits that same description you mentioned. Only .22lr and air rifles are shot in this range and this lead melts much faster than the jacketed and hard cast bullets I get from an outdoor range. This indoor range lead is much easier to scratch and must be close to being pure lead. For shooting, I plan to make some nice soft point and hollow point (add tin), bullets to experiment with. From a 5lb pot, I get a lot of black dust too.
 

Spindrift

Well-Known Member
@burbank.jung
I did som sunsonic expansion testing with a presumably identical alloy (.22lr/airgun lead) in this thread. Happy shooting!
 

DC1972

New Member
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.
View attachment 15899
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.

This is nearly identical to my findings. I have weighed some buckets out, you get about 65% in round numbers. I use some of the same tools to scoop and melt. The unburned powder is a real deal. There is a lot of it and at first you think it is dirt, that is what it looks like. I swept up our range and figured that was it but then I realized I had it in several other buckets to varying degrees.

While I am waiting for loads to melt I sort out the jackets. I have made it a game to see how many I can get in a session. I sell them but really, they aren't worth the effort. I have a large old bottle on a shelf in my reloading room full of jackets for a conversation piece.

The one thing I have found is that all the paper, rubber, and other garbage in the lead can act as a flux itself. Sometimes when i am stirring it up after sifting off the garbage I am amazed at how nice it looks but I go ahead and flux anyway. You can get the stuff pretty clean which I tried to do at first, but this last 400lbs I did I got it to the point of "good enough" after fluxing twice. The point about stuff being in suspension so stir deep and wide is valid.

follow what he says and you can't go wrong!
 

Mitty38

Well-Known Member
I got some lead dust gave to me from work. An 5 gallon bucket. Has no antimony but about 5% tin.
Finally got up the nerve to ask the "Big Boss". Right after my Scrap thief indecent. By the way they are pretty sure the got the guy, same MO. Just by that time, my stuff was long gone. Thanks again guys for the hand up by the way.. anyhow where was I ....

He said "that has been around here 20 years, got it passed off on us". "It is not even on the books, bring your truck tomorrow", so I did. They even loaded it up for me. ( BTW... Metal 5 gallon bucket of lead dust is a lot heavier then a plastic 5 gallon bucket of wheel weights)

It will be used up someday. So far mixed a pound with 4 lbs of my range scrap. Seams to blend pretty well. Just takes a little longer to melt in. Have not cast with it yet. Too many other irons in the fire.

I cannot get any salvage -recycles to take the jackets or bad brass around here, have tried, a lot.

They said they would take it if I smelted it, but I am not that ambitious, nor do I have the room to store it till I get enough.
The will not take brass because they might get a "loaded cartridge" in the mix. They will not take the jackets because they are "contaminated" with lead.

So I just throw it in a marked, sealed container, put it beside the can. Let the local recycling"trash man" take care of it. He takes it, so either he, someone he knows, or they have a way of dealing with it.
 
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Kevin Stenberg

Well-Known Member
For anyone that has reclaimed lead dust under steel plates. Do you try and separate small gravel pieces. Or just reclaime everything and separate in the melting process?