Lead recovered from range backstop

[Nipigon Jack]

Is anyone collecting lead from the back stops at their clubs?
How good/ bad is it for casting?
There is lots of copper mixed in and having never cast before, I'm not sure how that may complicate the process.

 

[cooey43]

Is anyone collecting lead from the back stops at their clubs?
How good/ bad is it for casting?
There is lots of copper mixed in and having never cast before, I'm not sure how that may complicate the process.

When melting lead the lighter stuff ( dirt , copper etc. ) all floats on top & can easily be spooned off .
Adding beeswax will help to clean & separate the mix .

 

[John Y Cannuck]

I've used it, it's dirty, and of unknown composition and hardness until you have tried it. Lots of skimming.
It will likely plug up a bottom pour pot unless you melt it separately in an old pot and make clean ingots using a dipper. Sand like debris on the bottom that for some reason didn't float when I last tried it.

 

[ryan]

I do this all the time. You ideally want a separate melting pot, and be prepared to flux the melt a lot. Dry sawdust works well.

 

[redbirddog]

its a cheap and easy way to build up a stock pile of lead. X2 what Ryan said.

use a separate melting pot and sawdust is great to flux. Pour into ingots to use latter. I do it once every 4-5 years and turn a few hundred pounds of junk lead into about 100-200 lbs of good stuff.

I also cast a 2" round ball for my mini cannon..

 

[yomomma]

It is dirty as has been said.

Wax is a reductant and is very good at helping change tin oxides back into tin and incorporated it back into the lead

Pine shavings are great when used as a flux and will actually help get the impurities out of the lead.

I usually use pine shavings for the primary cleaning and bees wax(or any other wax) just before I cast into ingots.

Good as is for handgun bullets, cut half and half with clip on wheel weights good for rifle

 

[QUATTROISKING]

I’ve only been getting 60-70% max out of a bucket of scrap lead everything else you’re skimming so for instance if the bucket of range lead is 80lb you’re only getting 50-60 lb max of lead.

 

[303EppsFan]

Is anyone collecting lead from the back stops at their clubs?
How good/ bad is it for casting?
There is lots of copper mixed in and having never cast before, I'm not sure how that may complicate the process.

I just used an old iron frying pan on a Coleman stove and melted my range lead/wheel weights/water pipe in that and scooped off the floating junk and poured into ingots. Don't do it in your casting pot if you can help it. Ventilate well!

 

[Potashminer]

Along with the sawdust to help separate out the crap, I also use a wood stick to stir and scrape the pot sides and bottom - 1" or so wide; 1/4" to 3/8" or so thick - a foot long or more - wood stick eventually chars away, but it's cheap and works great to get the crap all floating to be scooped off, instead of stuck to the melting pot.

 

[Dogleg]

I melted down quite few pails of it that I got for nothing. With hindsight, nothing was the right price. If I had to pay anything for it it wouldn't have been worth it.

 

[Janeau]

Range lead is usually soft - close to pure lead - anyway the few batch I tried, but it can be anything.
I ended up mixing it with ww and it worked at .45 acp velocities. But it is a lot of work to pick up and clean up. Now for rifle I buy my alloy pre- mixed. For pistol, I use clip on WW.

 

[Auggie Doggie]

Just be careful with plated bullets. If the plating is not compromised, the lead core goes molten and can force it's way through a weak spot in the plating and spurt out. I cover my dutch oven with the lid just in case.

Auggie D.

 

[hatman1793]

Ideally, range scrap from in indoor range is better than outdoor stuff. All types of lead bullets & hardness value are fired in indoor ranges & should be relatively easy to collect. You sort as you smelt, but its still the worst job, & completed separately from casting.

Range lead ingots can easily be BHN 7-10, perfect for low to medium velocity .38 special, 40S&W, & 45acp. Once your quest hits 1000 fps this range lead needs either to be hardened up with tin, pewter, or lino, WW, etc. Many casters are now powder coating lead bullets in this BHN range making them suitable for high veloicity calibers like 9mm, .357 mag, etc

Casting your own bullets after your initial cost setup will save you huge money over the cost of expensive single use bullets. Why not collect other shooters expensive single use bullets & turn them into almost free bullets for you?

 

[buckbrush]

I use a pine or spruce 2x4 cut into something resembling a paint stirring stick for fluxing, it works incredibly well. Much better and cheaper than Marvelux.

 

[ted_dent]

I'm a little mystified at people saying they get a lot of waste or that it wasn't worth the trouble. The only impurities indoor range lead will typically have is paper residue from targets and perhaps a little wood if wooden target frames are used and these just burn off and help to flux out the impurities. Our indoor range allows FMJs so there are copper jackets but they quickly float to the surface and are easily skimmed off. There is certainly less waste than wheel weights where there are steel clips by the hundreds to contend with not to mention the smell and smoke of burned off oil, brake fluid, etc.

Range lead might be a little softer than wheel weights due mainly to 22s but essentially the hardness won't be much different than the bullets that generated the range lead in the first place which apparently were OK to shoot.

With wheel weights apparently going for $1 pound (and that includes the weight of the clips plus increasing amounts of zinc & steel) I think that free range lead generating minimal waste is about the best deal you're going to get. Even if you have to buy a little pewter or solder to get the alloy up to snuff it still makes for about the cheapest projectiles you're going to find. But hey, if you want to pay $100/1000 or more for commercial cast lead bullets (and more for plated) knock yourself out. That's just leaves more range lead for me to make bullets for free.

 

[notsorichguy]

I use Marvelux (from Brownelles) when rendering range lead. We usually net 6-700 pounds per year after the rendering is done.

I use a separate pot to render with a propane fired burner under neath it. Ladle from the pot into ingot moulds.

Each full pot equals 60 pound of ingots. I use an RCBS dipper to cast one boolit right before I fill my ignite moulds. So that I can test each batch for hardness.

I’ve had batches as high as 23bn and as low as 14bn. Average is 18bn

Before I started using marvelux (we used to use beeswax and sawdust to help dross the mix) the best we ever got was 14bn average was 11bn. And we’ve rendered several hundred tons of lead from the range... it’s been open since the 60’s and we mine the trap at least once a year..... back before my time, in the 70s and 80s it was a 3-4 times a year task as the volume of shooting was quite a bit higher....

 

[ryan]

I use Marvelux (from Brownelles) when rendering range lead. We usually net 6-700 pounds per year after the rendering is done.

I use a separate pot to render with a propane fired burner under neath it. Ladle from the pot into ingot moulds.

Each full pot equals 60 pound of ingots. I use an RCBS dipper to cast one boolit right before I fill my ignite moulds. So that I can test each batch for hardness.

I’ve had batches as high as 23bn and as low as 14bn. Average is 18bn

Before I started using marvelux (we used to use beeswax and sawdust to help dross the mix) the best we ever got was 14bn average was 11bn. And we’ve rendered several hundred tons of lead from the range... it’s been open since the 60’s and we mine the trap at least once a year..... back before my time, in the 70s and 80s it was a 3-4 times a year task as the volume of shooting was quite a bit higher....

I don't understand how your lead can be 18 BHN. I hardly ever see more than 12 BHN, usually less. I think the average is about 10.5

 

[Janeau]

Marvelux is a flux and does not change anything to hardness. There is something wrong in the way you check your hardness. There is no way range lead will get more than 10.

 

[notsorichguy]

I don't understand how your lead can be 18 BHN. I hardly ever see more than 12 BHN, usually less. I think the average is about 10.5

I was also surprised to see the difference.

My assumption is that the marvelux works much better at re-introducing the tim and antimony back into the lead... the trick is to “stir” the pot and marvelux every time we skim off the dross.

Marvelux is a flux and does not change anything to hardness. There is something wrong in the way you check your hardness. There is no way range lead will get more than 10

Believe what you want, but after 20+yrs of doing this I trust my tools to give me accurate information. The way the bullets I cast preform also bear this information out. If you don’t believe me feel free to come to our next clean up and do your own testing.

According to my LHT the Linotype I have on hand is 23bn.

 

[fingers284]

actually, what & how you flux is very influential in what an alloy BN # comes out at. You are right that flux in itself wont change lead hardness but the flux type you use & how you skim after it is used will very much change hardness. Some flux materials are better at re-introducing the Antimony-tin content back into a lead solution than others are...it the hardening part of the formula isn't left in the melt and continues to "float" on the top with the rest of the impurities & you skim thoroughly to a clean, silver puddle, you will remove some of the very important parts to harder lead.

For the best explanation on lead hardening & fluxing lead read the book " From Ingot to Bullet" by authors Fyxell & Applegate .