Any other lead for casting besides wheel weights?

S

soulchaser

CGN Ultra frequent flyer
Rating - 100%
3   0   0
Location
Toronto
So, I've been reading a bunch of threads here and elsewhere about casting bullets, and want to get into it.

In case I have trouble finding wheel weights, are there any other lead products I should be looking out for? Some sites I was looking at mentioned roof flashing and lead pipes.

Also found a couple places online selling 5 pound ingots, but obviously much more expensive than sourcing used wheel weights.

There are a few metal recyclers/scrap yards around here, but I'll have to check to see what they have or if they even sell smaller quantities to individuals.
 
I have got a lot of lead from the backstops on pistol ranges. Lead scrap is getting harder to find. I was trying to scrounge some wheel weights locally this week and was told that all the new weights they are fitting now are lead free. A 5 gal bucket of wheel weights might be 10% lead, and the rest zinc and steel, you pay your money and take your chance. If you have a pistol range with a dirt backstop you might be able to pick bullets out of it. I am holding off shooting at home on the farm til I can build a backstop/bullet trap so I can recover my bullets.
 
Roof flashing and lead pipes are usually sourced from scrap metal dealers. If there is any demolition of older buildings near you it doesn't hurt to contact the company doing the demolition and ask if they'll give/sell any lead.
Some people have managed to get big boxes of lead sheeting from the dental x-ray strips. They are from the x-ray film for shipping/storage purposes before any radiation hits it so there is no risk of radiation contamination. Most dental offices have switched to digital x-ray systems so there is no more film and thus no more lead sheets.
Some guys have talked about getting the crucibles that medical isotopes are shipped/stored in but others mention radiation contamination. Lead is used for radiation shielding because it both blocks/reflects and absorbs some of the radiation. I haven't looked into the risk much since I don't have access to anything like that. I would definitely do my research before melting any of them down though.
 
I wonder if old car batteries is a worthwhile source, I usually see them abandoned at various places, and it should be easy to acquire a few without a lot of problem.
 
No!!!!
the warnings about smelting automotive batteries to recover the lead they contain needs a bit of explanation. Doing so really does have the potential to harm or even kill you and here is why. Maintenance free/low maintenance batteries use calcium metal-doped lead to catalyze the hydrogen gas generated from water electrolysis back into water. That is what makes the batteries low maintenance or maintenance free, you don't need to add water to the cells as often like in the old days. When the battery lead is melted down there is enough sulfuric acid from residual electrolyte trapped in the lead dioxide and lead framework of the battery plates to react with the small amount of calcium metal in the lead alloy. Normally when sulfuric acid (or water) gets in contact with calcium metal it undergoes a rather vigorous reaction that generates hydrogen gas. In and of itself this is no big deal, hydrogen is a simple non-toxic asphyxiant that is also flammable. But the lead alloy used in batteries also contains a bit of antimony and even arsenic to help harden and strengthen the lead to withstand the vibration and general knocking-about batteries have to withstand in order to survive normal automotive use. When hydrogen comes in contact with arsenic and antimony, or compounds of these two elements, the hydrogen reacts to form ammonia analogues called arsine and stibine, ash3 and sbh3. Both of these are heavy gases and both have the similar characteristic odors of rotting fish. In world war one the germans experimented with these, along with phosphine, another rotting-fish-smelling gaseous ammonia analogue with formula ph3, as war gases. As such they were highly effective since they are deadly in amounts too small to easily detect. In even smaller amounts that are too small to immediately kill they cause rather painful lung damage that often eventually leads to emphysema and lung cancer.
So, leave smelting car batteries or using lead smelted from them to professional recyclers. Many folks including myself have successfully smelted batteries and lived to tell about it, but the risk is just too great to mess with the stuff.
Click to expand...
 
Just cut the terminals off and save them. Rest of the battery, not enough lead to make it worth while and too dangerous. Lead inside a modern maintenance free battery generally isn't in a form we can use anyway.
 
LUTNIT said:
Roof flashing and lead pipes are usually sourced from scrap metal dealers. If there is any demolition of older buildings near you it doesn't hurt to contact the company doing the demolition and ask if they'll give/sell any lead.
Some people have managed to get big boxes of lead sheeting from the dental x-ray strips. They are from the x-ray film for shipping/storage purposes before any radiation hits it so there is no risk of radiation contamination. Most dental offices have switched to digital x-ray systems so there is no more film and thus no more lead sheets.
Some guys have talked about getting the crucibles that medical isotopes are shipped/stored in but others mention radiation contamination. Lead is used for radiation shielding because it both blocks/reflects and absorbs some of the radiation. I haven't looked into the risk much since I don't have access to anything like that. I would definitely do my research before melting any of them down though.
Click to expand...

I wondered that also. So I asked the guy doing radiographic testing of welds at work about lead I got from a dental office demo.
He compared it to shining a flashlight. Once the light is turned off, the object no longer contains any light.
I suspect that if the old lead sheets were still glowing, they would be treated as hazmat, and tightly controlled. And Workers Comp would have all sorts of rules to handle it.

Anyone know FOR SURE?
 
sawzall said:
Just cut the terminals off and save them. Rest of the battery, not enough lead to make it worth while and too dangerous. Lead inside a modern maintenance free battery generally isn't in a form we can use anyway.
Click to expand...

With the possiblity of lead in the blood stream that's as far as I would go with batterys and I'd wear gloves for handling the rest
 
migrant hunter said:
I have got a lot of lead from the backstops on pistol ranges. *snip*
Click to expand...

This where I source my lead as well!

2 of the ranges I shoot at offer up the lead from the bullet traps to the guys who show up for clean-up days before taking it in to the scrapper.

There's slot of .22 in there so it tends to come out at a Brinell of 10, but that's acceptable in my book, a little Lino or mono into the mix for faster loads, but 10 is perfect for pistol shooting imho.
 
tootall said:
I wondered that also. So I asked the guy doing radiographic testing of welds at work about lead I got from a dental office demo.
He compared it to shining a flashlight. Once the light is turned off, the object no longer contains any light.
I suspect that if the old lead sheets were still glowing, they would be treated as hazmat, and tightly controlled. And Workers Comp would have all sorts of rules to handle it.
Click to expand...
The guy's analogy is more or less correct for electromagnetic radiation. That's part of the same spectrum as light, radio, microwaves, etc. and if lead was exposed to it at some point there wouldn't be much worry. Metals that absorb electromagnetic radiation gain an incredibly slight electric charge as a result; this is normally detected as a static charge if the metal is exposed for a long enough period of time. Anything not absorbed in this way is reflected. A strong enough radiation could ionize the lead to a radioactive form of lead but this is highly unlikely without absolutely massive amounts of very high energy radiation like gamma rays.

The one I'd be worried about (specifically with the crucibles used to transport isotopes) is particulate radiation which is actual particles which are radioactive. That's the stuff that gets blown on the wind from the Fukushima and Chernobyl reactors and deposits in the soil, animals, people, and everything else. Shielding panels from an x-ray machine likely had no exposure to particulate radiation and was just blasted with electromagnetic radiation. Something that actually contained a radioactive substance could have particulate radiation present on it physically. How much is there? What's the safe limit? Does smelting, casting, or shooting release it into dust that can be breathed in? Is it enough radiation to worry about? I don't know the answer to any of these questions.

If what you got was backstop shielding from an x-ray machine I wouldn't be worried. I'd just be worried about anything that physically contained a radioactive substance.
X-ray machines used in medicine don't use radioactive substances to generate the x-rays but a mechanism similar to a CRT so there is little risk of contamination unless the machine is still on.
 
lead ww are getting hard to find but if you look around you will find enough for your use, and the soft lead can be used for blending to make it harder for handgun use. I have been collecting ww for years and have about 1600 lbs in 1 lb bars on hand to keep me going for years. having this much lead on hand is almost as good as gold bars as it is getting hard to find and lots of reloaders will be looking for it. always mark your bars so that you can tell what is soft and what is ww.
 
If lead shielding used in an x-ray room actually "absorbed" the x-rays and became dangerous, don't you think that the people that work there on a daily basis would need "shielding" from the shielding? But they don't, do they.
 
tjsudbury said:
If lead shielding used in an x-ray room actually "absorbed" the x-rays and became dangerous, don't you think that the people that work there on a daily basis would need "shielding" from the shielding? But they don't, do they.
Click to expand...
You obviously didn't read my entire post. I'll quote myself for the part you must have missed:
LUTNIT said:
Metals that absorb electromagnetic radiation gain an incredibly slight electric charge as a result; this is normally detected as a static charge if the metal is exposed for a long enough period of time. Anything not absorbed in this way is reflected.
Click to expand...
Metals do this with all forms of electromagnetic radiation. That includes visible light, UV light, radio waves, microwaves, etc. Where do you think the sparks come from when you microwave something metal? There needs to be a certain minimum energy level in the radiation before it happens and it doesn't happen with visible light very much so we don't perceive it. Visible light doesn't carry that much energy; UV light does, that's why it can "burn" you (a sun burn). I don't know if x-rays have enough energy to cause an electric charge in lead but I would guess that it does at least somewhat otherwise all the lead would do is reflect the x-rays in which case you'd have to shield everything else. A minor amount of absorption would cause a very minor static charge; perhaps too little to even detect without specialized scientific equipment.

I also clearly pointed out that there is practically no residual radiation from this process if only electromagnetic radiation is in play. As I clearly said it is particulate radiation that I would be worried about. That is actual physical particles of radioactive material such as those that could be left behind if the lead container was used to store or transport medical isotopes. These isotopes are physically radioactive substances that you can touch.
 
LUTNIT said:
You obviously didn't read my entire post. I'll quote myself for the part you must have missed:

Metals do this with all forms of electromagnetic radiation. That includes visible light, UV light, radio waves, microwaves, etc. Where do you think the sparks come from when you microwave something metal? There needs to be a certain minimum energy level in the radiation before it happens and it doesn't happen with visible light very much so we don't perceive it. Visible light doesn't carry that much energy; UV light does, that's why it can "burn" you (a sun burn). I don't know if x-rays have enough energy to cause an electric charge in lead but I would guess that it does at least somewhat otherwise all the lead would do is reflect the x-rays in which case you'd have to shield everything else. A minor amount of absorption would cause a very minor static charge; perhaps too little to even detect without specialized scientific equipment.

I also clearly pointed out that there is practically no residual radiation from this process if only electromagnetic radiation is in play. As I clearly said it is particulate radiation that I would be worried about. That is actual physical particles of radioactive material such as those that could be left behind if the lead container was used to store or transport medical isotopes. These isotopes are physically radioactive substances that you can touch.
Click to expand...

I wasn't responding to your post
 
And now I look silly. Oh well.
It does still stand that metals do absorb electromagnetic radiation but not in the way many people seem to think (you aren't alone in thinking it remains as radiation).

So medical x-ray shielding is perfectly safe. I'd be careful with anything involved in radiation treatment for cancer though since that's quite a different matter.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom