Roofing lead - suitable for casting?

In my experience roofing lead is very soft and excellent for black powder muzzle loader and cartridge with a little tin added. If you are casting for high power you will want to try to harden it up some or trade for other alloys.
If you can find it under $1/lb you are doing pretty good. Mostly seems to be a more than that from the rumour mill.
 
From what I have been told, round ball coming out of a smooth bore should be as soft as possible but anything involving rifling should be a little harder. Does anybody know how hard is ideal? Any recommendations on a hardness tester?
 
I'm looking at the same issue. I can get soft lead locally for $1/lb. Fine for shotgun slugs and muzzle loader bullets, maybe light pistol loads if mixed with
a little lead free solder. It would be good to make a 50/50 mix with clip on WWs.
 
Here normally $1.00 a pound will buy it also. Think I only got 30 cents a pound for the last wheel weights I dropped off so them selling for a buck is probaly still the rate
Cheers
 
It's very suitable for soft boolits for muzzleloading or low velocity rifle rounds or shotgun slugs. It's not quite pure because the company that makes roofing lead doesn't care about that. But it's close enough.

I got some a few years ago and it was coated rather liberally with tar, and some chunks of old shingles. I chopped and hacked and pounded it into a shape that would fit into a dutch oven, then melted the stuff down. I skimmed the crud that didn't burn off the top, and used a Value Village soup ladle to fill ingots.

NEVER melt this stuff in your good melting pot unless you borrowed the pot from a friend you don't like very much. Then it's ok. The tar leaves an unholy mess all over everything and the dirt and crud will mess up drain holes so that they leak worse than before.

How many pounds of this did you score? Or is a pending deal?
 
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zuke said:
I just bought some last week for $0.63/lb from the scrap yard
Click to expand...

I'm cranky. Every scrap dealer in Toronto told me they don't sell to individuals. They have supply contracts with businesses only. Every Garage tells me they have a contracts with scrapyard for wheelweights and won't sell to me. Every roofing company tells me they have supply contracts with recyclers...or they never see lead roofing. No one cares about price, or offers of beer or anything. The answer is always a resounding "no".

I had to go to Hamilton to find a manufacturer who would sell me some. At TOP dollar. (At least I got exactly what I wanted.)
 
My 2 cents on the casting with pure lead, I cast with pure for revolver near 600-700ish fps. Mostly lite 38s are all I cast with pure lead. Automatics its too soft when the boolit is feed up the feed ramp it dings and mares. I find straight clip on work great for my autos and you can always water drop them if you find they lead. Last thing if you are dedicated and really enjoy the hobby try PAPER PATCHING them, you can push pure lead as fast as any jacketed boolit. Advantage to PP is if you hunt the stopping power is unparalleled, disadvantage is takes forever to make even a 100. Lastly if you drip for shotguns I use my pure lead as target shoot,.
 
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