First Lead Haul. .. . .

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Rivardo

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So today I hit up a few spots and picked up some wheel weights. Stop 1 five 5gal pails 20 bucks a pop (I just sorted one pail and came out with maybe a 1/4 of a pal in lead lol) Stop 2 half a 5gal pail (just by looking at the difference stop 2 will prolly be more fruitfull than stop 1 lol) Stop 3 Approx 700lbs of hi percentage WW lead just by scanning the tops. I just decided to go for it as ive never done a lead haul before. Its pretty fun. If I knew what I knew now I woulda left the first five pails and moved on. needs less to say I have a massive load. My buddy said I can use his 1oolb tiger torch powered pot to make some grey gold! better than my first plan of using one of my moms pots and a hot plate (she'd never know right?!).... . Anyways I have been thinking/wanting to do this for awhile and today I put my plan into action. just looking for advice or comments or other first time story stuff
 
I would use cast iron to melt the lead in, agree about any water or moisture being extremely dangerous. Fluxing with wax or dry sawdust works well for me. Watch out for zinc, a real enemy of melting lead. Have lots of ventilation.
 
Chas59 said:
Watch out for zinc
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I'm using a pair of cutters and if I can indent the material I presume it's lead. Are there any softer zinc alloys I have to watch out for? I know there are the soft rubbery stick on zinc weights but are there any softer clip on zinc alloys? Or are they basically as hard as the steel ones.. I've found that the clip on lead weights seem to vary in hardness. Some dent and some I can cut right through
 
The softness of the material is usually the simplest way to tell but to be sure, you may wish to melt the material while keeping the temp below 700F. Zinc melts at a higher temp, so you should be able to skim it off after the lead melts. Key is managing temp, last time I checked, zinc melts near 800F but you can verify that.
 
A bazinganum magnet works well for sorting out the zink ww. It only attracts the zink ones.

M
 
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Btw, check out on YouTube a guy with the handle fortunecookie45lc, he has quite a few videos on melting lead, casting bullets etc and he does an excellent job. He also talks about lead exposure that he has experienced and what to watch out for. Good stuff.
 
Stop 1 I got maybe 3/4 5gal pal from the five pails. I prolly won't stop there again unless I can get a pail for 10bucks..20$ too much I'm thinking. Prolly work out to a buck a pound maybe more....
 
I just always scooped up the zinc and iron crap from the the top and never worried about the sorting thing. I include a few stick-ons in the melt for reference, and never get the temperature hot enough to melt those. If your temps are below the melting point of lead, you're not going to melt any zinc. I later melt the stick-ons separately. It helps if you never start a batch completely "dry", in other words have a couple of inches of alloy in your pot that you put your next batch into. Just make sure it's bone dry!
 
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