Recovered range lead

[Tinker2]

I think you're thinking too much.

It’s a California thing maybe :idunno:




:blah:
William Alexander

 

[mooman76]

Doesn't hurt to have more than one pot. I bought one and soon discovered it wasn't big enough so I bought another. One pot is dedicated to soft lead and the other to wheel weight alloy.

 

[ihuntsnook]

I bought a bunch of hard lead on Ebay, and a .568 mould from Jeff Tanner to cast balls to shoot out of my Colt musket. Wasn't sure how it would work, but the hard lead balls group as well as as the .570 swaged. I patch 'em tight and swab between shots. Just my experience. I don't see why a patched ball has to be pure lead. If you can shoot a patched brass ball accurately, as some have done here, I don't why stainless steel wouldn't work. It's the fit between the patch and the rifleing that imparts spin to the ball. Everything else being equal, the only thing that might affect accuracy might be the density of the ball. Just my opinion.

 

[bpd303]

The only reason I use two different pots for my lead, is I'm too lazy to empty one to change from hard to soft lead. :grin:

Actually I have three pots. One for pure lead, one for W/W alloy similar to Lyman #2 and one for pure linotype for my paper patched BP cartridges.

If you only have one pot, don't worry about cross contamination, unless it's not emptied after casting one or the other.

 

[hanshi]

If copper bullets and ball (roundball has used them) won't hurt steel bores then any lead based alloy, which is orders of magnitude softer than copper, will not damage pot or gun in any way whatsoever. The balls are patched, anyway, and don't touch the bore.

 

[BrownBear]

A heads up for everyone shooting range salvage. Or should I say for everyone casting range salvage.

You don't even want to get a live round mixed in there. Those things end up in the darnedest places at a range. I keep an eagle eye out when putting range lead in the pot, but there's still a chance.

My routine is to fill a dutch oven (cold) with range scrap, put it on a Coleman stove (outdoors of course), light off the stove and walk away for a good long while.

Don't even want to be in the same neighborhood if a live round cooks off in a pot of lead.

 

[dikman]

I've only found one live round (.22) in the scrap I've collected so far (over 1000 lbs), but I always do a quick wash/sieve after I get it home to make sure there aren't any surprises mixed in.

 

[mooman76]

I always went through mine anyway to pick out the garbage they was there. There's always a certain amount of unwanted stuff mixed in.