Lead Source

[keweenaw]

We muzzleloader shooters tend to be a cheap bunch so finding a source for good, clean, FREE lead is always a plus.

Every hospital of any size at all gets a considerable amount of lead in the form of small pigs (no they don't look like pigs, they look like little cups with a lid but they're called pigs).  They are the shipping containers for radioactive stuff used in the nuclear medicine or radiology department.  After they remove the glass vial with the whatever in them, the pigs are just tossed out.  I have a doctor friend at our local hospital who simply asked the guys in the radiology dept. to toss them in a box rather than the trash.  Every now and then he goes by and picks up a box, puts it in his car and tells me to come get it.  Great lead, absolutely clean and in convenient size pieces to toss in the lead pot.

Tom

[Longknife]

Snyder, have you noticed any problems useing this "nuclear" waste? ---Hair falling out---growing extra toes---skin turning green?/

[keweenaw]

Nope!  The lab has to check each vial that arrives (federal law) to demonstrate that it's not been contaminated due to leakage and the radiation released from the stuff shipped in it doesn't make the lead radioactive.   The glass vials that were in the lead pigs are another matter.  That stuff has to be treated as contaminated nuclear waste.  Because getting rid of the contaminated waste is very expensive the lab doesn't put anything into the waste barrel that they don't have to.

[Scott Bumpus]

I had several of these style containers given to me a few years ago.  The lead was very hard, cast up some ingets and they would ring if hit with a hammer.  They made great duck decoy anchors though.

[keweenaw]

Stuff I've been getting is very soft.

[hanshi]

I've used it as well.  Soft and great for casting ball.  And no, it isn't radioactive.

[volatpluvia]

The purer the lead the more radiation is absorbed.  So I should think that the lead would be as pure a they could get it.
volatpluvia

[44-henry]

I remember when I first started grad school I was received a call from a friend who said that there was a box of lead free for the taking in the basement of the physics building on campus. Sure enough there was a box of lead---something like 4' square. Greedy as I was in those days, I never really figured out a good way to haul or store it. I am sure it would have been a lifetime supply for myself and half the population of Grand Forks. Oh well.