Where to buy lead?

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So I'm thinking about casting some bullets down the road and it seems like lead prices have improved since last year!

Where is the best place to buy lead appropriate for casting?
Can I buy ingots or bars of lead that are already the right alloy or mix for bullets?

And for anyone that buys cast bullets.....has the price come down since last year?

Thanks.
 
The alloy is lead and tin with a little bit of antimony. The antimony is important, but other than linotype, I can't think of any scrp source that would have it in it.

BUT, if the local indoor pistol range has a steel backstop that collects the smashed bullets, you would have a souce of lead that is about ready mixed as you can find.
 
Thanks guys, I can see where the home caster would be looking for re-cycled lead to cut down on costs, but I guess commercial casters like the BulletBarn would be buying from a supplier like Canadametal.
Cheers.

quick calculation....at $3 per pound it would cost 10c per 230grain bullet for material:eek:

What's scrap selling for these days?
 
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What about tire weights? I 've heard of fellas using these and adding in the right mixings. You can probably get these from any tire shop in your area?

Straight Shooting

Budweiser2
 
I live in a pretty small town but I'll look into the tire shops.....from what I've read here in the past it's getting harder to score wheel weights because they are not all lead now and after last years price increase for scrap metal the shops are not giving or throwing away lead...
 
Wheel weights continue to be a good source of bullet metal. Sort through them and remove any that are marked with a Z which are zinc. Save them and sell them back to a scrap metal dealer when you've accumulated a pile. They are more commonly used in some U.S. sataes and Europe and I have encountered few of them so far. Separate any of the stick on wheel weights which appear to be pure lead. Melt down the clip on wheel weights and the stick on in separate melts. The latter may be added to W/W ingots if you want a softer alloy or used separately for muzzle loaders, black powder cartridges or low velocity target loads such as hollow base wadcutters for revolvers.

A useful additive to the wheel weight metal is solder of various kinds to increase the tin and/or antimony content. The ultimate would be 95/5 (I think that is the SnSb ratio) lead free solder but solders like 50/50 PbSn or 40/60 PbSn should be grabbed when you see a deal. Get a feel for normal market values. Also hardened lead bird shot (magnum shot) can be added to increase hardness.

I occasionally go to rad shops and get their floor scrapings and remelt and clean the dirt out of that to reclaim the dripped solder. It is a messy job but it's usually free for the carrying away. The last time I got some it was a 45 gallon drum full which they loaded in my truck with a fork lift. I reclaimed about 75 pounds of solder from that . That isn't much compared to the initial volume so there was a lot of dirt to haul away as the whole drum weighed a few hundred pounds.

Straight wheel weights are useful for a lot of target shooting and hunting and can be made harder by water dropping or oven heating and quenching in cold water.

There is a lot of experimenting you can do in making lead alloys. Get the Lyman Cast Bullet loading guide. There is a lot of good info and kinks revealed there as well as the load data.
 
My local indoor range has been there since 1944, and as far as I know, the backstop has NEVER been cleaned out, I'm sure if you wanted to get all dressed up in a hazmat suit and do some sand sifting, they would be more than happy, but you'd probably need a dumptruck to take it all out.
 
tkv000 said:
My local indoor range has been there since 1944, and as far as I know, the backstop has NEVER been cleaned out, I'm sure if you wanted to get all dressed up in a hazmat suit and do some sand sifting, they would be more than happy, but you'd probably need a dumptruck to take it all out.
Click to expand...



What do they do just keep moving the firing line back? :D

65 years of lead eh.....that would keep a guy fully stocked for a few generations!
 
I'm not sure, theres a few "old boys" who say its never been cleaned, and there they guys who look after it. Its an old drill hall. Theres many meters of sand back there, but I suspect its all actually just lead doing the catching.
 
And the lead you get from a range is mainly pure lead if they get a majority of jacketed bullets. I've been doing some mining of berms locally and all of it is very soft. I've been getting wheel weights and occasionally people sell 92-6-2, Linotype, and babbit though I'm not so sure they sell it up there. I get a lot of lead from people in other states.. We have a US Postal Flat rate box, and they stuff 50 or 60 pounds of lead in them and ship them for $11 or $12. Otherwise check your local tire store.. WW lead is hard enough for most pistol bullet applications.
 
Use babbitt in small quantities to add tin/antimony to other metal. Some babbitt alloys have higher amounts of metals not necessarily desirable in cast bullets such as nickel and copper. Important to know exactly what kind of babbitt you have before using.
 
I do have a mold for fishing leads. I cast a lot of them and I allways used the lead from the tire shops (wich are for free).
For making bullets I know I will need to ad tin and antimony, but I don't have any ideea the percentage.
There is any place on Internet where I can find the recipe for casting my own bullets ?
 
Wheel weights work fine as they are, or with a little 50-50 solder added. You can get new wheel weight alloy or Lyman #2 or Linotype from Canada metal. Price depends on how much you buy, but it is nowhere near 3$ a pound, $1.50 is probably about right.
 
First off. Many garages/tire shops already have scrap dealers picking up their weights.
Scrap lead is being sold by scrap dealers right now for typically $0.50/lb. I have no idea what they're paying the scape pickup guys for it, but you can bet it's much less. Don't get all excited about that though. Most of the lead they get in a scrap yard isn't hard enough for casting. If you can find one, buy a Lee lead hardness test kit. You need to use them with a reloading press. It puts a small dent in the lead with a ball on a calibrated spring. You then measure the width of the dent with a small optical microscope that comes with the kit and compare it with a chart that also comes with it.

They will want to sell you scrap wheel weights for the same price as general lead scrap. How are you negotiating skills ?? Tell them you'll give them 25 cents a pound and see where you get. There's zinc weights, iron weights, plastic, steel clips, etc all mixed in there. It's not like it's clean, sorted metal. If they go for it, buy 1000-2000lbs, do a giant smelt one weekend, and you're set for life. I know that sounds like a lot, but 2000 lbs of lead doesn't take up very much room.

Printing press linotype is pretty much a thing of the past. If you can find it, buy all you can because you won't likely find it again. Most of it is long gone. Bearing babbit is casters gold because the antimony content is high enough that you can mix softer lead with it and come out with good stuff. Again, it's pretty rare.
 
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Save yourself the time and effort (you'll burn a lot fo propane melting down and cleaning wheelweights) and buy certified alloy from Canada Metal. That's what competitive BPCR shooters do. If it's just for making pistol bullets that don't need to be crazy accurate, use whatever you can get your hands on.
 
A friend and I cleaned out the steel bullet trap at the local indoor pistol range, we got about 4 full 5 gal buckets, melted her down and cast ingots.Just add a bit of 50/50 solder and your'e in bidness! For the cost of cleaning it out and melting! Enough for a few years anyway.
 
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