Grainy lead

[Eric Krewson]

A friend gave me a 10# bar of hard lead to add to my lead supply. I melted the ingot into some existing pot lead that was a mixture of WW lead and soft lead to cast round .690 balls for my fowler. I tried to cast a few balls this morning and found that the new lead wasn't all lead, it is grainy when cast and you can break the sprue waste easily, it doesn't bend like normal lead. I suspect these balls if shot could shatter on impact, they are that brittle.

My normal lead balls weigh 481 gr, these weigh 475. I don't know what was in the lead I added, it was a counter weight from a forklift.

I hated I mixed this unknown lead with my good lead and rendered it unusable. I stuck an eyebolt in my round pot before the lead cooled and turned 20# of lead into a dandy boat anchor.

Anyone run into grainey lead?

[Daryl]

Could it have had zinc in it?  The Addition of zinc will or can destroy the casting properties of a pot, permanently.

The casting properties of lead with zinc in it, is horrid.

What diameter are they?  What diameter are your normal 481gr. balls?

[valley firearms]

I would say zinc

[bob in the woods]

Almost certain you have zinc contamination. Bad stuff !!  I had this problem years ago, and the balls /bullets were unusable.

[OldMtnMan]

That really sucks! Why do you think they added zinc in the first place?

[hanshi]

Yes, no doubt it contains some amount of zinc; it doesn't take that much, either.

[bob in the woods]

I believe that some wheel weights have zinc , or are zinc . 

[smylee grouch]

I have wanted to try some wheal weight RB in my 62 but was always a little leery about the zinc possibility. Maybe I should have kept some of the over a ton of line-o-type that I sold a couple of years ago. Not for pure line-o-type RB but to use as a blend with pure lead.

[RichG]

save it for fishing sinkers! Or trade it to some one who makes sinkers, no good for bullets of any kind.

[smylee grouch]

I sold the line-o-type to a guy who uses it for black powder cartridge bullets and he claims it works good for him but I don't know if he cuts it with lead or anything else.

[n stephenson]

I worked in a die-cast plant for about 10 years back in the 90s , We did do some zinc casting . That sounds very much like what you have. We made some zinc hammer heads , I still use mine sometimes . It`s good for not marring a surface.   Nate

[OldMtnMan]

I still don't understand why the zinc is put in. What are the positives of using it if it makes the lead brittle?

[bob in the woods]

I should clarify.  Some of the "stick on" wheel weights are just zinc. They're lighter weight . Also some of the clip on ones are zinc too. These are mixed in to the 5 gal pails of scrap I get from the local auto repair shop. If you just melt it all down without sorting through the stuff, some zinc is bound to get in your pot.

[P.W.Berkuta]

I also use to get scrap "lead" from the tire places and as said you had to sort through the stuff. The zinc weights were marked with "ZN" and also has a "different look" to them. Some years back there was a guy that would trade you equal pounds of zinc for lead don't know if he is still doing it. For the modern cartridge caster the Linotype is like gold

[OldMtnMan]

I seem to remember being told that the clamp on wheel weights weren't all lead, but the stick on weights were. Not sure if it's true.

[Daryl]

I still don't understand why the zinc is put in. What are the positives of using it if it makes the lead brittle?

I suspect ALL California wheel weights are zinc.  Zinc is not added to lead WW - the WW are zinc.  They are easily visible due to their colour & weight.   As well, some have a Z on them. Imagine.

[OldMtnMan]

It is added. I believe lead, tin, and zinc is solder. It just seems that a lot of guys who cast bullets are coming up with zinc in their lead. I don't think they're adding pure zinc weights from Calif. There must be another reason small amounts of zinc is being added to lead and showing up in casters lead.

[Eric Krewson]

I cast some soft lead balls in the same .690 size and they all came out around 485- 486 gr, 10 gr heavier than my contaminated lead.

[hanshi]

Thankfully, I collected all my WW back in the 1970s & 80s and have used them for casting bullets and rb ever since.  I still must have at least 150 to 200 pounds of them.  And that doesn't even count another 100lbs of reclaimed "range" lead.  I never picked up any weird (zinc) ones.

[Daryl]

I've never heard or read about zinc being in solder - maybe in the non-lead solders, I do not know about that.

One of the fellows here got some WW from a local tire shop, then dumped them all into his lead pot - some of them were non-lead, ie: Zinc WW. Screwed up the melt and his pot - for a while, but leached out of the pot's pores after another pot of two. Seems to me, it ruined a couple 20 pound pots full of good lead, but with a lot of fluxing, it finally came clean.

My pure lead/bore chart lists 14 bore as .693" and 500gr. for pure lead that size.  7000gr. divided by 14 = 500. It does not list .690" ball weight.

[Dobyns]

Stick-on wheel weights are soft, but not necessarily pure lead.  Clip-on WWs can be lead/antimon/tin mix, zinc, or iron.  Lead alloy WWs will bend and are easily marked with side cutters - the others, not so much...

I've had cable sheathing that was pure lead or nearly so, but it was salvaged from an old power plant.  Telephone cable sheathing that I've had contains other things including antimony, tin, and copper at minimum.  ANYTHING that floats to the top of the pot as the melt comes up to temperature should be skimmed off prior to fluxing IF SOFT "LEAD" is your desire.

"Hardened lead" as was used by "white hunters" in Africa contained a few percent of antimony or maybe 5% tin, so weren't terribly hard.  WWs with nothing added are harder.  Linotype contains too high percentages of antimony and tin to be of use in even smoothbores unless you want balls that will shatter.

[hudson]

I have probably cast up my share tonnage of wheel weighs through the years, stock probably twenty years old so can’t speak for the present. On a couple of occasions I have noticed some laying on the surface when first melting definitely something different. Don’t recall results after skimming it off. All scrap lead is melted cleaned and cast into one pound ingots before using for bullet casting. Ran into some cable sheathing that passed the finger nail test though noticed a bit harder to load and destroyed my groups. When placing one against a Hornady ball in a vice it was noticed it stayed round well imbedding itself in the Hornady ball.

[JBJ]

Watch those solder joints on cable lead and on plumbing lead! I found that the solder was a lot harder alloy than the body of the cable material and, in my case, resulted in a lot harder lead than I was looking for. As soon as I started removing the solder joint before melting into ingots, I went back to nice soft lead for my old hog rifle. Results may vary!
J.B.

[Daryl]

After discovering re-placed Tel. cable sheaths were pure lead except for the soldered ends, I cast and shot over 400pounds of new telephone cable sheath.  I used an axe and cut off the soldered ends and mixed them with the WW for my smokeless guns & BP ctg rifles. That was back in the 70's over the course of about 3 to 4 years.  On a couple occasions, I'd drive to the BC Telephone building on King George Highway in uniform and with the PC.  Out at the shop, the employees would load my police car trunk with brand new lead cable sheaths - about 3 different sizes of them.  I then drove to where I lived and dropped the lead off, then carry on with the day's work. One haul was enough for a couple years shooting. Along with the range salvage and finding the odd 'old' sheathing on the ground under the telephone poles, I only needed to "approach" them at the BC Tel. building a couple times.
I used to shoot a lot. Other than round balls, my cast bullets, handgun and rifle, ran from 275gr. to 540gr.