AmericanLongRifles Forums
General discussion => Black Powder Shooting => Topic started by: David Veith on December 04, 2008, 12:08:15 AM
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Has Any One bought any of late. And At what price. Just poured up 60lb for the school and need to have some idea what to charge them.
David Veith
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I happen to know of at least one ML shop that gets 1.25 for a 1 lb ingot soft lead.
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Has Any One bought any of late. And At what price. Just poured up 60lb for the school and need to have some idea what to charge them.
David Veith
Scrap lead fromteh junk yard was .8 per pound last summer. Has to be higher now.
Dan
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the price of lead and copper has been soaring for the last few years, to the point that states are enacting new laws to deal with theft of scrap metal from job worksites and such ... but like the price of oil, i think that the bubble has burst. last time i looked, pure lead was a little more than $1 a lb, but not sure now. heck, gas prices here have dropped 2/3 since july
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I am out of lead and buy swaged ball. Would not mind picking up a little pure lead for casting. Where?
DP
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The local recycling yard gets 50 cents/pound for PURE lead. Cable sheathing, flashing, etc. Be sure to examine it closely , some may pass off lead alloys along with pure lead. Metal prices have been dropping so it may be selling for less in the future.
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Scrap lead prices have dropped recently. A friend reports purchases as low as 0.65 per pound in 100# buys. Now if we could get the price of powder to drop.
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The only price I've ever paid for pure lead or wheel weights is free. I must have the most generous customers & friends! ;)
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Today's spot price was right around (US) $.44/lb.
http://www.kitcometals.com/charts/lead.html (http://www.kitcometals.com/charts/lead.html)
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i have about 3 >5gal bucks full of ww i was given by my macanic now all i need to do is get that 440/490/and 530 rb mould and ill be set ;D
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Ottawa, wheel weights don't make good rb. It's too hard. It cools larger than the mold, and usual weighs less than lead.
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i have about 3 >5gal bucks full of ww i was given by my macanic now all i need to do is get that 440/490/and 530 rb mould and ill be set ;D
Ottawa- trade that WW to someone for pure lead. First, I'd melt them all down and make ingots. A length of 3" angle iron is great for making ingots. Just weld square plates on the ends of a 12" piece of Angle iron. Weld them so the flats of the plates hold the open angle facing up. Once melted into ingots, you shoudl be able to trade straight across for pure lead. Be careful you don't get any zinc WW in the mix. The glue-on strip weights are pretty soft and may be OK for round balls. The crimp-on weights are all too hard and are WW metal. Those marked with a Z are zinc and are garbage and will destroy the whole pot of lead fopr casting balls or bullets.
WW is not suitable for round balls in anything but large bores. Some have been able to make them work in paper ctgs. in bores as small as .54, but that's about it to my knowledge.
WW metal is perfect for centre-fire black powder ctg. gun bullets, as well as modern rifles and for centre-fire handguns. It can be further hardened to withstand up to in excess of 3,000fps, but is not suitable for muzzlelaoding round ball guns with patches.
The reason is the WW makes a too hard ball that will not conform into the rifling. Pure lead is needed for that.
If you don't mind wiping between shots, and you don't care if you get lousey accuracy, you may find a load that will allow you to shoot WW balls with a thin patch and a wad between patched ball and powder.
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WW alloy is OK for balls in my smooth bores. I just have to keep my balls seperate for the .54 rifle and my 28 ga.
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its surprizing, but ww will bang up steel targets, too. :o
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Though I'm no authority on it, back in the day, all the best smoothbore shooters used hard lead from a consistent source. Pure lead for rifles.
Lead is a commodity. The spot price IS the price and anything else is baloney. It may change, but what is, is.
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Most of the fellows I shoot with use WW's in the smoothbores. it's dirt cheap- usually free and makes pefect balls for the non-rifled type. In the .69 Rifle, with it's .012" deep rifling and 66" twist I was able to use WW balls with up to 96gr. of 2F or 82gr. of 3f. Above those loads, I had to use pure lead and heavier patches due to the higher pressure requiring a tighter fitting load than could be loaded with the hard balls. The only heavy loads that could be shot accurately with WW balls were with paper ctgs. In their case, the empty paper ctg. wadded up beneath the ball prevented gas blow-by. The double wrapp of paper fit tightly enough to take the rifling - tightly enough that a short starter was easier loading than without. If the starter wasn't used, the rod had to be choked up to about 2", just to get it started into the bore. Even with the stater, loading, capping and firing off that shot was an 8 second deal. Large bore rifles can shoot very accurately with WW balls and paper ctgs. The deeper the grooves, the fewer the # of shots that can be fired. A friend's .75, with .024" rifling can only fire 3 paper ctgs. then has to have a very tight, pure lead ball and sopping wet patch fired with a light 3 dram load to 'clean' the bore. Then, another 3 shtos can be fired with paper ctgs. and WW balls.
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I was fortunate to get an old lead sink from the chemistry lab at the local Highschool when they did a remodel. It was pure lead and worked great. The next best I have found is the lead from old car batteries. The downfall is having to store the acid until our local sanitation dept. has their HAZ MAT disposal. A way around this is to get old batteries that were broken in an accident that had the acid drain out. The batteries usually have about 20# of lead or more in them
Todd
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Todd- please look elsewhere for lead. Lead from car batteries (inside on the plates) is quite hard for one thing and has a considerable nitric acid in it - when heated it releases vapours which are quite toxic - arsnic?
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Daryl,
Thanks for the warning. I did not know that and had actually gotten the info to use it from a book years ago. The strange thing is, if you read the hunting magazines etc, they tell you that most commercially made bullets are made from old car batteries. Hornady said in one article I read that it was the best source for lead for them.
What gives here?
Todd
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Every site on casting bullets or ball such as the Cast Bullet Society or Cast Boolets, tell you not to use battery lead as it contains all kinds of interesting chemicals as had one thread on this one. What a factory can do with environmental controls and what we can do are two different things. I think if you could find the old terminals from wire that attach to the batteries you would be OK. Battery lead is just not recommended. Check the previous posts, I believe that it was covered.
DP
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Years ago- like in 1969, Taylor cast some balls from battery lead. They were exceptionally hard and unsuitable for anything othe rthan possibly a smoothbore. Even at that, the toxicity says NO!
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I would think if Hornady was recovering the battery lead they would be set up to do it safely, or buy it already recovered. I get lead from my dentist. It seems to work fine, and it is free. Thanks Mark
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I,for one, am not quite ready to accept all the horror stories about battery lead and all the boogey men it contains without thorough proof from someone who is directly involved with analysis and alloying of the metal used in the batteries. Hearsay just is not good enough.
I will concede that a lot of things go into the making of a lead acid battery that could be bad, so lets stick strictly to only those metals used in the alloying of the lead.
Jim
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Lead shot has dropped like a rock! September I was elling 25# bag for $45.00.
Last week it was $25.00.
I'm still letting WW go for .80 per pound.
I've not checked the scrap yard for soft lead as I have some still in the shop.
I have had several request for reloading dies and prices. All thso guys who purchased those odd wildcats short mag Hi-power stuff are finding ammo harder to find and not so cheap.
I think things may drop off some more and if they do ya'll better buy-buy-buy.
Maybe I'll start a salvage business and head to Iraq to do some enviromental clean up for the NWO GREEN movement. ;)
bpb
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if ya go to iraq bring ya some of your own lead