I've been collecting lead to cast and reload for some time. A couple of years ago I went around and bought some wheel weights and melted them into ingots. Since then my plumber friend has been dropping off old pipe and bits of sheet. More recently I scored a really big chunk (150+ lbs) from a friend who used it as weight on his lawn tractor.
I was out in the garage yesterday cleaning and got bitten by the bug, so I fired up the two place outdoor stove and went to melting... The really big piece came in a steel box, so I melted it in that- it took about 1 1/2 hours to get the darn thing hot enough! Probably took 4 hours to cast everything...
There is approximately 240lbs of lead that is of unknown alloy and approximately 75lbs of pure lead.
Add to that, this- which is my first batch at around 200lbs which means that I'm somewhere north of 500lbs of lead ready to be made into bullets. That's a lot of bullets!
I was out in the garage yesterday cleaning and got bitten by the bug, so I fired up the two place outdoor stove and went to melting... The really big piece came in a steel box, so I melted it in that- it took about 1 1/2 hours to get the darn thing hot enough! Probably took 4 hours to cast everything...
There is approximately 240lbs of lead that is of unknown alloy and approximately 75lbs of pure lead.
Add to that, this- which is my first batch at around 200lbs which means that I'm somewhere north of 500lbs of lead ready to be made into bullets. That's a lot of bullets!