I have had good luck with range scrap in my black powder firearms and modern pistols, rifles, and muskets. I seems to have a higher working temperature than pure lead, but is really pretty soft. No need to add tin, but with the prices for Sn and SB, I use it as is. I got about 30 pounds of scap from my backstop in the back yard. I taught 4 of my yuppie friends critical of our kind of people until the crime rate where they lived started to go up in their well to do suburb. I asked if they would like to start with (evil) handguns like the cowboys in movies, or a reproduction Musket from the 18th century. They replied, when can we come. They were hooked after firing a "Remington 1858" and my Brown Bess. The initial sessions were mostly safety, safety, and then supervised shooting. All were NRA members within a month. BP was a bit much for them after the first session that I asked them to help clean up, and we moved on to smokeless. Being "DINKS" (double income/no kids) they had more money than I and each got a carry permit, and bought almost as many guns as I owned (30 years of saving). They moved on and after that I mined the backstop. I did research into effects of organic lead in paints common in old buildings in the inner city on child brain and behavioral development in the late 70's and became somewhat of an expert. Please wear a lead (Pb-rated respirator even if you have a good fan system when you are melting and casting pure lead and especially range scrap. Scrap contains other metals as hardening agents like antimony (Sb) Any really old bullets may have trace amounts of arsenic (AS). Metal fumes are the fastest way to get significant poisoning. Keep your hands out of your mouth, and kids away. The younger they are the more vulnerable. Like the rest of the body brain isn't fully mature until the early to mid-20's. Of course we all know that it is all down hill after 25! We are proud of our safety records as hunters and marksmen, extend that! Soon after my data were published the tree-huggers petitioned the EPA to ban lead bullets as a "significant new use of a known environmental toxin." Lucky, our president at the time was Ronald Reagan.
