I got hosed

[Idaho Ron]

I got some lead from ebay. The add said soft lead on the header. In the text it said "50 Lbs of good soft lead for sinkers NOT WHEEL WEIGHTS" and the seller has a 100% rating.
Well what I got is not soft. I don't have a hardness tester but I do have soft lead. My mould throws soft lead bullet that weighs 385 gr. I have some lead shot that I melted and poured into bullets. The bullets are HARD and the weigh 375 gr. They don't have the same look as the soft lead ones they look like the hard lead ones. What do you think I should do? Ron

 

[Doe]

Do you shoot hand guns you can make lots of 357 mags bullets or 44 etc..etc..or you can sell it here I'm sure some one will take it off your hands. :thumbsup: good luck!!

 

[RetiredMedic]

Leave him a Big Negative..

I would not trust any lead I don't see before I buy it..

There is a lot of garbage out there...

 

[rabjr]

Turn the lights out...does it glow? :shocked2:

 

[nw_hunter]

Do you shoot round balls? If you do, use it for target shooting. Mix some with soft lead and mold.
Or sell it! Chances are, he will not leave feedback for you, until he receives it from you.(Ebay should require sellers to give feedback first)But they don't.

 

[rice1817]

The nominal wts on those molds are only approximate. Your bullets weigh 97% of what the nominal is, and that is not bad. I would use them as is, and remember, alloyed bullets soften with age, so if you cast up a bunch and let them sit for a while, they may work fine. Also, sizing cast bullets tends to soften them, as lead "work softens" as opposed to "work hardening" of steel.

 

[Idaho Ron]

The lead was intended for conical bullts. I informed him that he needs to change his adds. I am sure they would work for target work, but I wnated soft lead for paper patch bullets. I have 500 pounds of the hard stuff. I might see if i can sell it local. Ron

 

[sundog]

If you used Paypal you can initiate a dispute with them. If you used a credit card through Paypal then you are really in luck. Contact your credit card company and file a dispute with them.
The credit card company is likely to find in your favor.

 

[Birddog6]

Just the fact that it was on eBay would tip me it was not pure. He had it on there because he could not pass it locally as pure lead. If it was pure lead a gun shop would have bought it or a bait shop for makin sinkers.

Write it off as a mistake well earned & make a lifetime of sinkers. At least it was only 50# of lead & not 500# of it.

In the past 40 years of shooting, I have looked at Many a block of soft lead that I wanted for making ML balls. If I looked 100 times I'll bet only 2-3 of that hundred were pure lead, but every one was stated to be pure lead.

 

[Idaho Ron]

I will probably just chalk it up to a lesson learned. One thing that bothers me is I got a message from the seller. The lead came from car batteries. That worries me. Ron

 

[uncrichie]

I will probably just chalk it up to a lesson learned. One thing that bothers me is I got a message from the seller. The lead came from car batteries. That worries me. Ron

Ron, read this little bit of info on battery lead. Uncrichie
[url] http://n-ssa.org/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=7801&highlight=battery+lead[/url]

 

[uncrichie]

Heres also an interesting site to keep track of daily lead prices, not for the faint of heart I might add. Uncrichie[url] http://www.kitcometals.com/charts/lead_historical_large.html[/url]

 

[jimmy82]

Well, I wouldn't call it a total loss. You could re-smelt to a temp where only the lead will melt, do not flux and then skim everything that is not lead off the top. It will make for a higher percentage of lead then what you have now. If I am correct this system is used frequently to separate alloys and impurities (least that's what I was taught in physics and chemistry). Check out my last post on fluxing. There was some good info put out by other members when I asked about it.

Fluxing will help draw out impurities but at the same time will help other metals melt back into the lead recreating the alloys that you want to get away from.

If you are willing to put some time in to it, you could do both re-smelting first with a flux to draw out impurities, then re-smelting again without the flux to draw out the other metals to make the lead more pure.

 

[Sherlock]

So you got hosed. Give the seller a crummy rating for knowingly selling reclaimed battery lead as soft lead. Now to business. Battery lead is typically not as hard as wheelweights. The true test you can do is to get known lead and your material and mould up to temperature to cast and when cool compare diameters. Pure lead will be the smallest diameter, heaviest bullet you can cast. Figure the percentace difference in diameter or weight. Check the Lyman # 46 edition reloading manual on page 165. The chart indicates different diameters and weights for various alloys of lead. Interpolate to what you have. Then remember that the paper patched bullets hunters bought in those olden days were usually alloys as hard as 1/11, 1/18, and 1/22. NOT ALL WERE PURE. The second test is to shoot some, recover them to see if the nose is slumping into the rifling or not. Slumping is not good in pp if its the unpatched nose. Dont worry about RB unless you were loading with a peg starter and a mallet, really deforming the ball through the patch into the grooves. I got it once too by an Alabama dealer. Supposed to be same lot hard for the whole fifty pounds. By dropping 6" onto concrete I got three different ringtones. For my needs though, I will just remelt in one batch and make new ingots, a bit of GAS, and Work . Wonky

 

[Walks Alone]

Been through much the same. Not off Ebay, but from a gent on a gun board classifieds some years ago. Got 175#'s of lead from him and it cost a bundle to ship it across the country. When I got it and questioned that it was not soft lead, he finally checked with the local guy he got it from who turned out to be a SASS member that casts for that.

Still in the 5 small but heavy boxes it came in. No idea of what hardness it is, but I have no use for it. If I were to list it for sale on the classifieds here or elsewhere, what would be a fair asking price per pound?

:nono: (I am not offering it for sale on this forum, so please don't ask.) :nono:

 

[BigDave]

Ebay ?soft? lead is selling around $1+ per pound in 50 lb quantities. (the most you can fit in a $10 flat rate package)

 

[Thunderchild]

I think I got my lead off Ebay from the same dealer. Said it was soft lead from some sort of counter weight.

It was not soft. I have used half of it to make round balls and produced seven pounds of slag. the slag has a very odd color. It was redish and in some places blue color.

I am going to try to use the slag to make sinkers

No more Ebay lead for me.

I am going to the salvage yard and get xray room wall lead next time I need lead. I will have to learn to put up with the smell of buring sheetrock paper.