Lead; to buy or not to buy

yomomma

yomomma

CGN Ultra frequent flyer
Rating - 100%
103   0   1
Location
Ontario - Hamilton area
I already have a 50 gallon barrel full of wheel weights and have just been offered a 3800 pound keel at $0.70.

If it were cheaper ($0.40) I would probably jump at it without too much thought.
 
yomomma said:
I already have a 50 gallon barrel full of wheel weights and have just been offered a 3800 pound keel at $0.70.

If it were cheaper ($0.40) I would probably jump at it without too much thought.
Click to expand...

Is it a clean lead keel or still embedded in fiberglass?
I'm pretty sure the seller can not get more than $0.50 at the scrap yard so he might come around to $0.60

To me sixty cents for clean lead sounds good, better than 35 cents for dirty unsorted wheel weights.

You can never have too much lead :)
 
Is the lead keel soft lead or hard alloy? If you have to add tin at $20 a lb in a 10:1 mix it adds $0.18 a pound to your mix to get the same hardness as clip on WW (Brinell 12). I think that it is well worth the price and effort of melting WW to make ingots for casting. WW also have antimony and arsenic which helps if you water drop your bullets, it hardens the bullets allowing heavier loads without undue leading.
I cast pure lead for my .50 and .54 muzzleloaders and I still air cool some WW bullets for my 38 special light target loads but add tin to WW, water drop and use a gas check for my rifle bullets.
 
Perhaps Yomomma could interest some other parties to offset the full cost. Transportation issues come up too plus the "find" has to be cut up...another big job. I would be interested in kicking in some dough.

On another item brought up by 270 T, water quenching bullets might work for you but I tried it with 9mm cast lead bullets and it was a complete failure. Any so-called water hardening was easily removed when the bullet went through the .356 sizing die....
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom