Lead

[Eric Smith]

What is best to get when purchacing lead to stock to  melt your own? Seems to be a big variety with pure to some with different alloys. Wheres the best place to buy?

[cahil_2]

ebay usually has guys selling soft lead ingots suitable for roundballs.

[William Worth]

Scrounge baby!  Scrounge!

Recycle yards, garages, plumbing supply, builder's supply (lead flashing), roofing places, friends-of-friends....

[The other DWS]

If you are going to be using lead from unknown sources you might want to get some sort of hardness tester to evaluate your mix. (There are several on the market and they are not expensive)  Salvage lead can be almost anything from pure dead soft to various printing "type metals" that are so hard as to be brittle.
 For muzzle loading I'd avoid anything with "type" in it as well as any "wheelweight mix"--too much antimony and arsenic in it.   Old lead pipes, roof flashings, lead wool caulking while dirty stuff to work with are usually close to pure, as are bricks from nuclear containment (if that is what the REALLY are--not all such bricks on the market are real ones) and medical nuclear medicine shipping casks.    If you have a hardness tester yyo can quickly weed the useable mystery alloy from the stuff you want to sell on to the action pistol shooters.

Soft/hard alloys and lighter heavier weights go hand in hand.  Generally the harder alloy the lighter it will be.  While large bore guns tend to be less sensitive to minor variations in ball weight and powder charges smaller bore guns become more persnickety about such things.    Most BP roundball shooters prefer to use pure lead of maximum softness or as close to that as possible.  In some specific cases involving twists, rifling types and sizes, and patching materials a gun may respond to a harder alloy. but they are the exception rather than the rule.

   Many experienced caster find that a very small amount of tin in pure lead helps in casting the most consistent balls or bullets.

[54Bucks]

 I prefer the old lead drain pipe from plumbers who have been in the business for some time. I find it's a good inexpensive source of pure/soft lead. Depending on the size I just chop up with hatchet or maul to manageable size. Then melt into ingots.
 I'de like to know more about adding a little tin for better casting consistency. How much and what is a source for tin?

[Daryl]

When melting a large batch of lead into ingots, a section of channel iron or angle iron is handy as a mould, as-are muffin tins- do not use good tins and they are now lead ingot moulds. I use a large pot made form a tube of steel with a bottom welded on. It holds 80 pounds of lead. I stack bricks to set the pot on, with a Tiger Torch run off a 20 pound propane bottle providing the heat.  This is the easiest, quickest and handiest way to melt large quantities of lead- pure, or WW metal.
Be very careful when melting WW's, that there are no ZINC WW in the batch. The zinc weights not only destroy the melt in your lead pot, but will also contaminate the pot itself as it goes into the pores in the steel, then comes out into your next melt. The zinc ruins casting quality.

Many of us shoot cast WW balls in our smoothbores as it's cheaper or easier to find than pure lead. some large bore rifles also do well with WW.

[LH]

I'm a firm believer in pure lead for patched roundball shooting.  If you're not getting good casts,  then chances are you're not casting hot enough.  For pure lead,  turn your pot up as high as it will go and for iron moulds,  throw back the first 15 or 20 balls til you get the mould up to temperature.  Five or ten for aluminum blocks is usually enough.  Pure lead is hard to find,  but its out there.  I recently got an old bathtub pan from a house that was being torn down.  There's probably close to 200lbs in that one.  Lots of 40 caliber balls!   

[hanshi]

I have plenty of WW metal from way back but prefer to use soft lead in rifles and WW ball in smoothbores.  I've never had trouble with contaminants in either lead or WW.  for small game WW ball will do just fine.  You don't need expansion like you would in middle bores for taking deer.  In the larger smoothbores expansion becomes unnecessary once more.  Just be aware WW ball will be slightly larger.

[Eric Smith]

Midway USA offers a lead ingot that is 99.97 % pure lead. Would this make a good load or some smaller % pure would be better. It's pricey, I know, but with $4.00 a gallon on gas, driving around looking all over scrounging for free lead out of old stuff, it might be a bargain. Buffalo Arms offers a pure lead that comes in smaller quantities but it just says pure lead, no %. Anyone familiar with these products.

[stuart cee dub]

Gun broker has guys that sell lead and ship in flat rate USPS boxes.
Not a big favorite with our postman  I have had fair luck only with that lead.But have only bought from a couple of guys .
My experience is that particular it is fine for harder balls OK for smoothbore and smaller caliber rifles but useless for Minie balls.They might think it is soft and sell it as such but I had low expections and therefore was not disappointed. A hardness tester is a good idea so you can segregate your lead .

 (As mentioned) Lead roof flashing is great scrap as is the lovely lead wire from which they made utility meter seals .
Real lead pipe is great too as is the lead used to seal old iron pipes.
Let people know you're looking lead may find you.

[robert]

If you can cut it with a finger nail its soft enough. You only have to alloy bullets for cartridge guns.

[Daryl]

We're (Taylor and I) currently using lead sheeting from an X-ray room wall. It's very thin, but we've a fair stack of it.  I have to add 1/4" of 50/50 bar solder to a pot of 20 pounds to make it castable without excessive drossing and colouring.  I've not had that trouble with lead before - perhaps this stuff is similar to that 99.97% pure stuff. It is wonderfully soft.

Robert, we're not suggesting you have to alloy for round balls, just that in some guns you can use the harder alloys which are much easier to find, especially WWeights.  Too- in some rifles, you can use WW alloys for hunting, which improves penetration on dangerous game - yes, we know deer and black bear don't require hardened lead - but, if your gun shoots it, so much the better.

[750k2]

rotometals