By Cal Ward
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| Sieving lead is a sweaty, backbreaking job but a simple tripod eased the pressure on the old back |
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| Reclaimed bullets; sieved and washed to remove sand. There is still quite a lot of grit, pebbles and jacket metal which can be scooped out after melting. About 50% of the original bulk becomes pure ingot lead |
The lead mining habit started simply enough. I wanted a Sharps .45-90 and the only way to feed it was to cast my own bullets. I accumulated a small stockpile of recycled lead from various sources; roofing lead offcuts, old lead pipes, backstop lead, even lead from a few old batteries that had been lying around the place for years. Friends helped out and the stockpile grew and so did my interest in casting lead bullets and shooting black powder. Meanwhile the cost of factory copper jacketed bullets skyrocketed and one day I started shooting .30 calibre cast, gaschecked bullets at 100, 200 and eventually 500 yards. My collection of lead moulds expanded and eventually lead just took over. I stopped buying factory jacketed pistol heads altogether and used expensive jacketed rifle heads only for the longest shots. While this was happeing I was also losing interest in competitive shooting and was spending more time just perfecting black powder and nitro loads for cast lead bullets. I hunted with lead bullets too but leaned towards jacketed softpoints for humane reasons.
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| A long handled ladle is necessary to avoid getting scorched |
The attraction in casting your own bullets is twofold. Firstly there is the challenge - getting your cast heads just right is an acquired skill. Secondly there is cost and it certainly is an incentive to cast and load your own bullets when one considers that an American factory head can cost over £0.50 or even €0.60. By using recycled brass and lead a shooter can cut the cost of a round by up to 75%. Some dealers see this as a threat to their sales but of course it's not because bullet casters spend the same as everybody else when they go to the gunshop - the difference is they get more shooting for their money or bangs for their bucks as aou American friends say. If one factors in the increased wear and tear on barrels then the trade may even be doing better as a result of people casting and reloading. This doesn't apply in the Republic of Ireland where both the trade and the DOJ have set their faces against reloading. The Irish shooter has been double-crossed in this regard and has not helped his own cause by indulging in fratricidal inter-organisational infighting and old-fashioned backstabbing. With some notable exceptions the Irish firearms trade exhibits a narrowminded rapacious cute hoor ethos and does little by way of promoting shooting sports. I would venture so far as to say that some Irish gun dealers have the same chance of getting to heaven as the proverbial camel has of passing through the eye of a needle. I have sad personal experience of this and have paid a personal price for passing on money saving tips to my readers over the years. Hell hath no fury like an Irish dealer who loses the sale of a single box of ammo! Enough of that and apologies to my two closest friends who are both RFD's!
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| The jacket metal, grit, pebbles and assorted dross float to the top of the pot and can then be scooped out |
Lead is a heavy metal and is toxic to humans and great care is needed in its handling. I take reasonable precautions but it is only recently I actually met a shooter who has fallen ill from lead poisoning. His experience was a very unpleasant one and it behoves every shooter and not just every reloader or bullet caster to ensure he does not eat, inhale or asorb through his skin even small amounts of lead. Contact with ammunition is a source of lead exposure. As of 2013, lead-based ammunition production is the second largest annual use of lead in the US, accounting for over 84,800 metric tons consumed in 2013, second only to the manufacture of storage batteries. Users of shooting ranges, particularly indoor shooting ranges are particularly at risk where dry lead dust accumulates on sufaces and can be inhaled or eaten where hands have been contaminated. "Lead poisoning is a type of metal poisoning caused by lead in the body. The brain is the most sensitive. Symptoms may include abdominal pain, constipation, headaches, irritability, memory problems, inability to have children, and tingling in the hands and feet. It causes almost 10% of intellectual disability of otherwise unknown cause and can result in behavioral problems. Some of the effects are permanent. In severe cases anemia, seizures, coma, or death may occur". When handling and melting lead it is imperative that there is adequate ventilation and that contaminated hands and clothing are properly washed. I know of at least one indoor shooting range where dust was allowed to accumulate on a concrete floor in the belief it was ordinary house dust when in fact it was highly dangerous and toxic lead residue that was stirred up by shooters walking to and from the target area.
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| The ingots |
Backstops and in particular pistol range backstops are an excellent source of recyclable lead. Most ranges are happy to have members remove their fired bullets for recycling as the effort and expense of sifting lead for resale to scrapyards is considerable and doesn't show a profit. It is important to check with the range management and to fill and rake any excavations made as a matter of courtesy. A sieve is a useful tool for separating bullets from sand and should be used in relatively dry weather as wet sand requires enormous effort to shake it through the sieve. On the other hand too dry sand gives of lead -laden dust and gloves and breathing filters should be worn. The material thus recovered contains about 50% lead and the rest is jacket metal, pebbles, wood chips, broken clay pigeons, grit and general trash. Washing with a hose and a sieve removes a lot of material while the rest including jacket material floats to the top of the pot when the lead melts. A bucket filled with sieved material which is later washed and melted gives about 15 pounds of lead which is sufficient to cast about 800 nine millimeter bullets or 200 heavy 528 grain .45 muzzleloader bullets. What all this means is that you work for about four hours to produce 15 one-pound lead ingots. It's a lot of work and for this reason most shooters buy factory bullets or at least factory heads. Sieving lead is so hard on the back I usually spend a few days grounded with painful abused back muscles each June.
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| 225 one pound ingots |
Most shooters use a 10-20 pound electric pot to melt their lead. I have a different method which suits me better I stockpile my reclaimed bullet lead for a year and gather as much windfall timber as I can get over the winter. By June every year I have about 200 pounds of reclaimed material and a pile of dry deadwood. I suspend my pot between the barn and a Leylandii tree (the only practical use for Leylandii). I light my fire and lower the big metal pot using a block and tackle; place the armchair under the shade of the Leylandii (that's two uses for a Leylandii) and wait for the lead to melt. I scoop off the empty jackets, grit, pebbles etc and when I have a nice clean pot of bright hot lead I pour it into two Lyman ingot moulds which give me eight one pound ingots. It is hot, tiring dangerous work but infinitely satisfying as the pile of clean silver ingots grows. getting lead to cool quickly enough in the ingot mould is not easy on a hot June day nd I sometimes cool my ingot moulds between uses. This necessitates using water as a cooling agent and water does not mix with hot 400 degree lead. The worst thing that can happen is for water to get in the pot or the mould which causes an immediate and violent explosion as the water changes from liquid to gas in a millisecond and sends hot molten lead spatter in all directions. It is better to have an array of slowly cooling ingot moulds than to risk cooling one or two with water and causing an explosion. I've achieved this feat of incompetence and have a nasty area of scar tissue on my right hand as evidence. Dry your lead stockpile thoroughly and wear eye protection. Depending on the success of my year's "hoking" in the backstop (great Northern Ireland word, that) I might be four hours thus occupied and have 100 one-pound ingots. This year I had 225! Retirement is great for lead recyclers! 225 one pound ingots make about 10,000 thirty calibre bullets. Of course you have to re-melt the ingots in the electric bottom-pour pot in order to cast bullets in a bullet mould and this is yet another hard, tedious and dangerous job. Most people give up after a few hundred bullets and go back to their smiling local friendly gun dealer.
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| Ingot moulds cool slowly in June. Cooling with water is dangerous. It's probably better to get a few more moulds to speed up production |
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| The finished product. .31 ball and bullet ready for another journey downrange. I sometimes wonder how many times each bullet makes the trip! |
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| Casting lead bullets from an electric melting pot with a bottom tap |
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| The Payoff: A whole day's long range shooting at 450 yards with home cast lead bullets for an outlay of £8 (and a lot of work) |
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| Lead bullets tend to foul the bore at velocities over 900 feet per second. This thirty calibre bore has evidence of slight leading. This problem was later fixed by the simple expedient of lubricating the bullet heads liberally with Alox and home made beeswax/lanolin lube |
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| It is well to remember that big, heavy cast lead bullets generate lots of pressure and while case life may be longer than that of modern high-powered nitro powder cases, the straight-walled cases eventually weaken and separate as this photo shows. The rifling marks on the separated portion show that it travelled a considerable distance down the bore. |
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