Made some ingots this evening

TXTad

TXTad

Active Member
I have a new local friend who I met because of a discussion about the .38/44 on another forum gave me a large box of wheel weights. I'm going to cast up some bullets for the aforementioned caliber and split them with him. I got the wheel weights melted down into ingots ready for the next phase. There was the usual large pile of clips, but there were not very many zinc weights that I had to throw out.

I was going to add a few boring pictures of the process, but whenever I try to add photos from my phone the forum software says they're too big. Anyway, I'm sure you've all seen steel clips floating on top of lead in a pot and Lyman ingots with the N backwards.
 
S

STIHL

Well-Known Member
If your using an iPhone select the pictures then click the bottom where it shows show selected, it will take you to another screen and at the bottom right it says actual size, click that then select large or medium. I’m not sure of the boards actual file size limit, but usually I can do 5-6 photos as large. And they will load and you can post. If large won’t work, medium should.
 
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JonB

JonB

Halcyon member
I've been thinking about doing some schmelting.
I've got some cans of dross, some cans of pistol range scrap, and a bunch of lubed COWW bullets I want to recycle. I also acquired some highly oxidized ingots of what I think is pure lead, that I'd like to clean up, so as to not bring those into the house, where I cast.
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side note:
I am re-organizing two rooms where I store some stuff and found 150 lbs of ingots I forgot about, It was a mystery alloy that I had tested and was something near 98-1-1
I also found about 100 lbs of ingots of a large batch I bought and thought I had all used up. I was told it was enriched WW...but the seller couldn't tell me what enriched meant precisely. All I got was, "the hard stuff, that makes the alloy harder" I've measured the BHN and it was around 12. But it doesn't really matter.
 
TXTad

TXTad

Active Member
STIHL said:
If your using an iPhone select the pictures then click the bottom where it shows show selected, it will take you to another screen and at the bottom right it says actual size, click that then select large or medium. I’m not sure of the boards actual file size limit, but usually I can do 5-6 photos as large. And they will load and you can post. If large won’t work, medium should.
Click to expand...
No iPhone. The forum software should do that for me anyway. Grr.
 
TXTad

TXTad

Active Member
JonB said:
I've been thinking about doing some schmelting.
I've got some cans of dross, some cans of pistol range scrap, and a bunch of lubed COWW bullets I want to recycle. I also acquired some highly oxidized ingots of what I think is pure lead, that I'd like to clean up, so as to not bring those into the house, where I cast.
.
side note:
I am re-organizing two rooms where I store some stuff and found 150 lbs of ingots I forgot about, It was a mystery alloy that I had tested and was something near 98-1-1
I also found about 100 lbs of ingots of a large batch I bought and thought I had all used up. I was told it was enriched WW...but the seller couldn't tell me what enriched meant precisely. All I got was, "the hard stuff, that makes the alloy harder" I've measured the BHN and it was around 12. But it doesn't really matter.
Click to expand...
Some people think that 80 proof whiskey is the hard stuff.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
 
JonB

JonB

Halcyon member
I made some appleJack, that was somewhere around sicky pruph according to my calculations. It gave me headaches. I was told I needed to filter out the fusel alcohols.
Wait, did I just say that out loud, on the interwebs? oops.
 
S

STIHL

Well-Known Member
Seriously though, I’m partial to Wild Turkey 101, makers 46, 100 proof Knob creek that sort of stuff, and Basil Hayden, that’s some good s**t!!! Oh and bullit rye 95….

I can’t drink it like I used to, but I still like a double neat after dinner when I’m on the road.
 
JonB

JonB

Halcyon member
At one time, I had a taste for the mid-level Bourbons and Jack Daniels, now if I need to cleanse the palet, I reach for brandy.
 
RicinYakima

RicinYakima

High Steppes of Eastern Washington
Pretty much keeping with the family's one now: Bowman Brothers and Abraham Bowman. Hard to get west of the Mississippi, but my older brother brings me some when he comes to visit. Even though the cousins sold the company to a big corporation, it is still high quality stuff.
 
GRMPS

GRMPS

Active Member
First smelting this year, I made some ingots out of pipe joins and mic pure lead.

20240305_143354.jpg20240305_143405.jpg

I since turned 56 pounds of them into cores for 223 and 44 mag.
 
Walter Laich

Walter Laich

Member
On a similar note I 'mined' our cowboy club pistol targets--the ground below them to be exact. Rifle targets = not much

½ hour work, 7 stages

working on turning the lead bullets back into ingots--right now 100+ lbs with one more container of 8 to go
 
Walter Laich

Walter Laich

Member
So . . . after a total of 12 hours I am the proud owner of right at 150 lbs of ingots.

A buddy saw my post and we're going to work together to streamline the gathering.

not so much gathering but figuring out a way to get rid of more of the dirt and trash--just gather the lead

time will tell
 
waco

waco

Springfield, Oregon
I need to melt down some alloy soon. About out of the 200 pounds of ingots we made back in August of 2022. I’ve got 400 pounds of 3-4% Sb ingots from Roto Metals and 100 pounds of pure for the same company. Thinking about a batch consisting of 50/50 of each said alloy for GP bullets. I have a fair amount of Babbitt and Lino if the pot needs sweetened a bit.
 
Walter Laich

Walter Laich

Member
one good thing about shooting SASS (CAS) is our low speeds don't require much in the way of specific lead alloys. Just cast, PC, load and shoot--at our distances and targets sizes it doesn't matter
 
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