The Russian Mosin Nagant Forum

Anyone have a source for soft lead for casting muzzleloader bullets other than ebay? No wheel-weights...

Yes, but at the moment I am unable to cast it into ingots for shipping due to the winter weather conditions. I am currently sold out of the ingots I had made for resale.

Just go to your scrap dealer or recycling place near you. Look for roofing lead or flashing lead.

I buy mine there and we live in California. Not a lot of roof lead around here. but some!

Dolk

Junk Yard Dog wrote:Yes, but at the moment I am unable to cast it into ingots for shipping due to the winter weather conditions. I am currently sold out of the ingots I had made for resale.

let me know when you start up again please. I still have a while before I'll be able to get everything I need to start, "extra" time is in short supply at the moment....

One place to look, truck tire shops, truck stops with a tire shop and heavy truck wheel recon and recapping shops. There you should be able to find used tire weights up to 16oz , takes a bit of weight to balance a 100lb tire and steel wheel. I know the sticky weights used on some of the polished Alcoa aluminum wheels are very soft lead. I have seen zinc weights, but lead is still found quite a majority of the time.

I get my lead from old time plumbers and the kitchen ,bathroom remodelrs. Pre-WWII homes and buildings had to hand make toilet drain pipes out of very thick lead.The plumbers had to use blowtorches to melt the joint seals for iron pipes . I have been given 100 lbs.of pure lead pipe from just one two story 3 bath old home many times.Old time body shops often have leftover lead from the old days. They don't use it for that anymore so you might get lucky just calling around. Good Luck.

ebay

Search for "soft lead"

Not cheap these days. about $1.50LB .

I remember $1 LB.

Dolk

My shooting buddy Paul told me to check Butler's plumbing supply here in town, said they bought some there awhile back, mostly water pipe and roof flashing, I'd like to get a few hundred pounds on hand for the future.

Some say to not use wheel weights for muzzleloaders, soft lead only, only going off what I see online in regards to casting.

Most ML's use a patched ball, it's the patch that engages the rifling, not the lead. Problems come up when you try to use hard lead for a miniball, the cone of the mini must flare out on firing and dig into the rifling, too hard a lead and it's won't open up, this results in keyholes on target. Then there are the revolvers, hard lead will not hurt them, but it's that much harder on the shooter trying to stuff them into the chambers. With a smooth bore musket it matters not hard or soft, they are all fired with shot charge, or patched ball, there is no rifling to grip, the ball could just as well be stone and still work.

Mine's an inline, rate of twist is too fast for a lead ball. I used saboted .45 bullets but was having to clean every other shot due to plastic fouling from the sabot. Rather than search through the 70 zillion brands of sabots for one that "might" not foul I've decided to cast 320gr REAL bullets for it.

We have ball molds as well for when I run across a sidelock to add to the collection. Was shooting a Hawken style sidelock today that was pretty sweet, my buddy picked it up last week in a pawn shop for $150. Had a lot of fun till we got to BS'ing too much and he rammed a ball without any powder charge. Broke the ramrod he had trying to pull the bullet, he said to heck with it for then and we switched over to my 91/30...

He needs to get some FFFF black powder, remove the nipple, slowly push some of the fine grain powder into the chamber as much as he can or about 2, maybe 3 grains worth. Ram down the ball as tight as it will go, cap and fire it. It should be enough to pop the ball out.

Did that, didn't work. He did mention that the balls were a bit larger than what he wanted for that rifle. Got an email a bit ago that he managed to get it out, used a larger bullet puller and his heavy duty ramrod, it has a little slide weight on it that he used like a little slide hammer, once it started moving it came out no problem.

There is also a kit that uses compressed high pressure air to blow it out.

Paul's one of "those guys"... the ones who do things a bit different than most, which is why I kinda want to cast my own stuff rather than have him do it. When talking with him about different hardness lead, he will say stuff like "I just toss in a bunch of stuff and melt it down" or "Yeah, these balls are a little bigger than I am supposed to use but I'm gonna anyways." A great guy, don't get me wrong... last time I was down I asked him about the lead he had on hand and he showed me, a pile of water pipe under the old mobile home, a huge round of it the size of a manhole cover lying over by his forge. "I've got more of it around here somewhere" he says...""just have to remember where I put it." His place looks a lot like some of them you see on that show "Pickers" where they climb over piles of stuff in old buildings. He has junk cars and trucks shoved in the woods all over the place, all the times I've been down there and I'm still not sure exactly how many.

That water pipe is the good stuff, that is soft, pure lead, it's what I use when I can get it, toilet flanges, roof flashing, all of this will be pure. Pure, but dirty, you will have to flux it twice, maybe three times.

Kinda a old thread but didn't see the need to start a new one.

If I get a 10 pound section of lead pipe how much lead will it be after its melted down? Guessing its not pure lead but I could be wrong.

Also a 1/2 pound lead bars how many 50 cal balls will that make?

Lead pipe can have crap in it, I mean that literally as most of the larger stuff was used to plumb toilets. You should get at least 9 pounds out of it. There is waste from oxidation, and other impurities you must flux out of the lead.

Junk Yard Dog wrote:Lead pipe can have crap in it, I mean that literally as most of the larger stuff was used to plumb toilets. You should get at least 9 pounds out of it. There is waste from oxidation, and other impurities you must flux out of the lead.

Thanks I know it will change a little depending on the pipe but a local scrap yard will sell it to me for $0.80 a pound and just wondering how much is lead.

I need to read up on flux I don't know what that is.

Everybody has their own mixture, I do a quick and dirty flux on the lead I cook to ingots and then clean it better later for what I use myself. A chunk of paraffin wax tossed in the mix and ignited will cause the impurities to rise to the top as you stir the mix and you can scrape them off. .80 is steep, they are probably buying it for .20 if even that, scrap prices are in the crapper right now. but it's still better that if you had to ship it in. That's dirty lead, we would pay .25 a pound and might get .50 when we sold several tons of it. When I cook it down to ingots I charge $1.10 a pound, it's a lot of work and aggravation for me to do it, so I only sell the overruns from my own production. Right now the last lot is spoken for, I don't know when I will be doing another, too damn hot to be fooling with molten lead.

Junk Yard Dog wrote:Everybody has their own mixture, I do a quick and dirty flux on the lead I cook to ingots and then clean it better later for what I use myself. A chunk of paraffin wax tossed in the mix and ignited will cause the impurities to rise to the top as you stir the mix and you can scrape them off. .80 is steep, they are probably buying it for .20 if even that, scrap prices are in the crapper right now. but it's still better that if you had to ship it in. That's dirty lead, we would pay .25 a pound and might get .50 when we sold several tons of it. When I cook it down to ingots I charge $1.10 a pound, it's a lot of work and aggravation for me to do it, so I only sell the overruns from my own production. Right now the last lot is spoken for, I don't know when I will be doing another, too damn hot to be fooling with molten lead.

That is a big difference in price I better call around some other prices.I have a buddy that knows some scrappers(rebuilds bicycle and they sell him ones for parts) he might be able to get me from them before they sell it to the scrap yard.


I saw you where some times selling ingots but I would bet you have a waiting list.

Also doing some rough match here but tell me how far off I am. 1 pound of soft lead will make about 30 50cal round balls right?