Very old Buckshot

[Scota4570]

I've gone down the rabbit hole and am organizing and purging stuff, anticipating moving. 

I have about 30# of crusty, white, mis-shapen, buckshot.  Also quite a lot of oxidized bird shot, 50#?.  No bags to ID any of it.  I am temped to melt it to cast balls.  IT seems a bit harder than pure. 

On the other hand I don't like lead oxide around the house.  It is a nasty mess to clean up.  It is also significantly toxic.  Minimal handling and I can taste it from the dust. 

Will the lead obtained be useful if I decide to melt it down?

Throw it away?

[rich pierce]

I’d sell it at a scrap metal place.

[45-110]

Melt it down outside skim off the dross, and pour into a ingot mold, then you will have clean metal to view and determine its use. If too hard for a m/l the bpcr guys will shoot it. Lead is not getting any easier to locate so why get rid of it.

[Don Steele]

"On the other hand I don't like lead oxide around the house.  It is a nasty mess to clean up.  It is also significantly toxic.  Minimal handling and I can taste it from the dust.  "
 (emphasis mine)
THAT is why "get rid of it".
Some here might be sufficiently well trained, eperienced and equipped to handle the mess Scota4570 describes but from his own words...I'm not confident he is and since he asked, I would counsel proper disposal rather than trying to recover whatever portion of possibly useful metal might remain.

[J Henry]

  Shoot more and keep this problem at bay??

[Mike Brooks]

I have found oxidized lead shoots very well.  I buy it at gunshows on the cheap. And before I get scolded all over the place, I get blood tested every year and have no problems with any sort of heavy metals. Of course I not sticking my head in the bag of shot and huffing the dust either.  The Government has got people terrified of this stuff with all the propaganda they have put out in the last 40 years. I always thought paint was tasty when I was a kid.....must have been the lead.
Actually I never had the urge to eat paint, maybe I was smarter than most.

[smokinbuck]

I cast and keep on hand a number of round ball and some sit around for a while and periodically some will start to oxidize. I lay them out on an old towel, spray them with WD40 and roll them around. Cleans them up and good to go. Might be worth a try.
Mark

[hanshi]

The danger posed by lead is overblown for adults.  The hysterics we hear about how deadly lead is comes from those with little knowledge and no experience with the metal.  The story is different for youngsters and comes about from lead based paints in old buildings.  A friend in construction who has supplied me with 100s of pounds of the stuff, tells me that often the "experts/authorities/or whatever you want to call them have "hissyfits" if lead isn't carted off as toxic waste.

[Scota4570]

That is not it.  I'm not terribly worried about my health in this regard.  I too know the dangers of lead is wildly exaggerated.  I worked as a forensic scientist for 30 years, specializing in firearms matters.  I have in depth knowledge of the subject. 

In my area they test kids for lead.  IF they find any they pay a visit.  I don't want anybody from a government agency in my home. No good comes from those people snooping around.

When my son was three he liked to come out to the shop and explore.  I did some lead testing on surfaces.  I found massive contamination from polishing brass in an open top vibratory tumbler.  Primer residue has lots of fine lead in the ash.  It went everywhere.  There was no cleaning it sufficiently to get a negative test.   It got tracked into the house.  I bought new carpet.  I ended up  taking  the benches and cabinets to the dump. The shop floors were covered with linoleum tiles. I made all new cabinets and benches.  I don't want to make a mess again. 

Shot also is said to contain arsenic, a whole other issue.  I'll probably get rid of the shot.  It is now sealed in plastic containers.  $40 of scrap lead is not worth the mess. 

As a good housekeeping measure I cover my main bench with heavy paper.   There is a roll on one end like a Dr's office.  When the paper gets dirty I change it.  IT works out real well for dirty jobs, like casting bullets.   It also provides a nice background to see parts.  I have a heck of a time spotting stuff on the bench these days. 

[Mad Monk]

The danger posed by lead is overblown for adults.  The hysterics we hear about how deadly lead is comes from those with little knowledge and no experience with the metal.  The story is different for youngsters and comes about from lead based paints in old buildings.  A friend in construction who has supplied me with 100s of pounds of the stuff, tells me that often the "experts/authorities/or whatever you want to call them have "hissyfits" if lead isn't carted off as toxic waste.

The thing about old lead shot goes beyond lead.  When lead shot was made in shot towers the lead contained arsenic.  If you make lead shot in a shot tower with pure lead you get shot that looks like a pear.  But add about 8% arsenic to the lead and you get nice round spherical shot.  The arsenic alters the interfacial tension in the molten lear which gives the nearly perfect spherical shot.

This came up some years ago at Gettysburg and A Civil War reeactment.  Some guy found he could cast beautiful minnies by melting lead shot.  When he made up his paper cartridges he used the standard beeswax and tallow bullet lube in the scraper grooves.  When he went to shoot them the paper cartridges had a white crust where the scraper grooves were in the bullet.  The fatty acids in the tallow quickly leached the arsenic out of the lead.  So handling the cartridges with bare hands was not a good idea.

This think about arsenic in old lead shot.  The anti-gunners want to ban lead bullets.  The study where they claimed California Condors were being poisoned by lead fragments in the dead animals they ate was pure BS.  For better than a hundred years the favorite insecticide used in orchards was a lead arsenate compound.  Old orchard ground usually shows high levels of these two heavy metals.  It gets into the plants and then into the grazing animals and then into the meat eating animals.  Being concentrated up through the food chain.

When the wife and I were still on the bicycles we did the Western Maryland Rail Trail out of Fort Froderick (Fredrick or Frodereck)(Mel Books).  There was a big area out near the end of the trail wired off and owned by the state.  Old orchards that once supplied large amounts of fruits to the major cities near the coast.  Ground so contaminated with lead arsenate that you cannot harvest and game off the land because the game eats grass with the lead arsenate that builds up through the food chain.  Most of the studies out there on spent lead bullets is just so much BS.

And a bit of warning here.  Exposure to the various heavy metals may not catch up to you until you are well up in years.  There is a very long latency period between exposure and a fatal result.  Sometime look up the relationship between heavy metals and fatal blood disorders when you hit 70 to 75.  The same for certain chemicals we use.  I have spent the last two years digging deeply into that.  Simply because it is staring me in the face now.

Bill K.

[Old Ford2]

Hello Bill,
Thank you for the very educational post!
Fred

[Pukka Bundook]

Bill,

I was under the impression that lead shot was made hard and round with antinomy, not arsenic, and had been for a long time.  Can you comment on this?
(Mind, this comes from someone acquainted better with  British production. )

[Daryl]

Antimony yes to make it hard, arsenic to make it round.
There is also arsenic in the clamp or crimp-on WW's.
Arsenic is required in a lead mix to allow heat treating.
Heated in an oven to just under slump temperature, then quenched in a bucket of water
will harden WW or lead shot-cast bullets or round balls.
However THIS IS IMPORTANT - it takes up to 12 hours for the bullets or balls to obtain their
peak hardness - happens over time. Removed from the water after the quench, they are still
soft- THAT is when you lube and size them.  If you wait until they are hard, as in the next day
they will soften immediately when you size/work them.
If sized and lubed before they harden, they will act like full metal jacketed 'modern' ammo on game.
I thought  I read that the arsenic in shot was only 1%. Doesn't matter.
Straight antimony and lead mixes, as well as tin and lead will not harden. Thus, soft point bullets can be
made using a small dipper and putting tin/lead mix in the nose, then WW for the base. Thus, you can cast soft
point bullets for your bullet shooting ML rifle.
Just as you can draw the temper in a piece of hardened steel, you can draw the temper in a hardened bullet
as well.
"Jacketed Performance with Cast Bullets" - a book written by Veral Smith in the 70's is a wonderful bullet if you are interested.
No, my copy is not for sale.

Edited to include this:

Water hardened lead bullets or balls will gradually soften over time, back to their original brinel #. This varies with the exact composition and achieved hardness of the
projectiles. This softening process can take up to 2 or 3 years. Thus, balls or bullets hardened and used within a few months, will be about as hard as necessary.

Dropping balls or bullets straight into a water bucket (towel on the bottom to soften the blow) will have similar effect to using an oven, however
the hardness achieved will vary depending on the exact temperature of the ball or bullet when it hit the water thus hardness usually varies considerably
and usually from about brinel 26 to 32.  Note, lead/tin mixes, or lead/tin/antimony mixes, Linotype, usually brinel 21 or 22, nor Monotype, brinel 26 cannot be hardened further
as they lack arsenic  in their composition.
Properly heat treated in an oven (when she isn't home), balls and bullets can actually be hardened to a maximum of about 32 or 33 brinel. Dead soft copper
 is brinel 34.