Lots of little Mexican owned roofing businesses here in Vegas.
A case of cerveza or some hot elote can do wonders.
A case of cerveza or some hot elote can do wonders.
Lead supply
- Thread starter Troyfairweather
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My lead-sheathed phone cable scrap yielded 21 pounds:
A pain to separate from the wires inside but the result is dead soft. The source was underground work due to street improvements. Keep an eye out...
A pain to separate from the wires inside but the result is dead soft. The source was underground work due to street improvements. Keep an eye out...
Next time I'm in town I'll see if the scrap yard will trade some aluminium cans for a few lbs. of lead.
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Friend of mine just made .490 balls from dental shielding lead. He tried using them and had to hammer them to start into the bore. Had the patching he normally used. They were armor piercing hard , too hard to take the bite of the lands through the patch. Could remelt and make fishing sinkers or Ctg. pistol slugs w/ them ... Taught him the finger nail test to check lead for proper softness......
I always thought dental shielding was fairly soft lead.
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Eutycus........Man....I don't know what metal was mixed w/his dental lead , he made his .490's from. The last time I made a mistake like that I was working on spectro analysis machines in a Pgh. , Pa. lab. The analytical technician there gave some samples of pure antimony. Knowing the pistol bullets I was playing w/then were too soft , I cast some new ones mixed w/ the antimony. Thought I'd give my dad chance to fire the first shot of my new and improved hollow point slugs. At about 10 feet , He shot @ a hard cherry log butt. Good thing he was wearing a new solid , cast metal NRA belt buckle , as the hard slug bounced off the wood , then bounced off his belt buckle. I picked up the spent slug. It was so hard it looked like it could be reused , zero deformation.
Anyway , I told my .490 casting friend to give the hard balls to his grand kids for sling shot ammo.....oldwood
Anyway , I told my .490 casting friend to give the hard balls to his grand kids for sling shot ammo.....oldwood
Last time I sold aluminum cans they were not bringing very much. In that trade hope you have a lot of cans.
If you are talking the little thin strips of lead when they take x-rays, I've been told they are hard. Something like 14 by someone that has a hardness tester. They seem soft but that is because they are so small and thin.
Most dental offices around here have gone "digital" and they don't use the lead film anymore.
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So , dental lead is becoming obsolete , my sawbones dentist using digital also. What good are these guys , anyway???? oldwood
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Oldwood, your reminder about x-ray lead was timely to say the least. I've been melting down my scrap lead and was going to include this three-pound slug given to me:
I recalled the donor saying he'd re-molded it from x-ray shielding and lo and behold, I found I couldn't scratch it with my fingernail. In fact, I had to use a very sharp woodworking chisel to pare some away to check; it feels more like bearing babbit than any lead I've encountered. Thanks for the heads-up...
But, this nearly six-pound piece was at the bottom of a box of junk at a farm auction:
Old chisel marks from when it was cut from a larger ingot, apparently. Dead soft, probably plumber's lead?
I recalled the donor saying he'd re-molded it from x-ray shielding and lo and behold, I found I couldn't scratch it with my fingernail. In fact, I had to use a very sharp woodworking chisel to pare some away to check; it feels more like bearing babbit than any lead I've encountered. Thanks for the heads-up...
But, this nearly six-pound piece was at the bottom of a box of junk at a farm auction:
Old chisel marks from when it was cut from a larger ingot, apparently. Dead soft, probably plumber's lead?
Plumbers lead use to come in ingots like that, yes.
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Gun.........Of the 'bout 1/2 ton medical radiology lead I have , maybe 10 loose pounds is of uncertain origin. When you drop a piece of it on the concrete , it rings...."Ping". The soft lead goes "plop". I only keep the "ping" lead in case I have to make modern bullets due to political reasons to protect my family should hard times come.......Luck to ya....oldwood
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Moon , thanks for the info about old time plumbers lead. That explains why I've seen a piece or two over the years w/o the words Lyman or RCBS on the ingots..........oldwood
I think now adays even though they don't use it so much they have lead rope.
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Moon.....Think you're absolutely right. Too bad we have no access to all the lead rope they used on all the soil pipes the plumbers installed when buildings were torn down back in the day.....oldwood
I got one of those ingots many years ago when I was a young teenager from a friend of my dads. He was a plumber and explained to me how to start casting. I cast slingshot pellets back then.
Do any of you guys carve intials into lead chunks so you'll know what that ingot is composed of? Its fine and dandy when you can rely on a good memory but after a while they all look alike. Someday they could possibly wind up in someone else's hands and who knows how they'll be used. I use WW for wheel weights, PL for pure lead and FW for fishing weights. I even found one with a #1 scratched into it but don't recall what that means.
I did but got tired of that and switched to magic marker. Unfortunately allot of the markings faded over time, not all but some. I want to get a harness tester.
I melt my lead into little discs with my pot and an old 3" cast iron ash tray. Make little hockey pucks of lead that fit into the pot nicely. I build small boxes of 1x4 to store then, and write on the box PL, WW or ??
