GTA
All Springer/NP/PCP Air Gun Discussion General => Projectiles => Boolit and Pellet Casting => Topic started by: mackeral5 on February 22, 2021, 02:00:36 PM
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(https://i.imgur.com/W5cx6r7.jpg)
Last weekend project....
The dirty lead is about 7.5-8" deep in this 5 gallon bucket. easily weighs upwards of 150#.
Most of this was from JSB and NSA....I don't even want to do the math and convert weight to $$$$, lol.
I used a blower to remove most of the finer rubber and threads, but there's still a good bit in there.
I assume I just melt this down into clean ingots? Is there another step to reduce the rubber contamination?
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(https://i.imgur.com/W5cx6r7.jpg)
Is there another step to reduce the rubber contamination?
Probably not. Be sure to smelt it outside with a good wind. Gonna be stinky and not good to breath...
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Fish cooker ,old junk pot melt it down make ingot take to scrap yard sell for what ever price lead is per pound. Use money buy pellets or something.
Or buy a mold that makes something you use like fishing weights.
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(https://i.imgur.com/W5cx6r7.jpg)
Last weekend project....
The dirty lead is about 7.5-8" deep in this 5 gallon bucket. easily weighs upwards of 150#.
Most of this was from JSB and NSA....I don't even want to do the math and convert weight to $$$$, lol.
I used a blower to remove most of the finer rubber and threads, but there's still a good bit in there.
I assume I just melt this down into clean ingots? Is there another step to reduce the rubber contamination?
Dump it all into a large container such as a cheap plastic concrete mixing tub, and fill with water. The lead will sink and the rubber should float. It's worked for me to retrieve massive amounts of lead, that goes right into my pot.
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Following. I'll probly need to do this in the future for my crono back stop container but it will get recast as slugs and pellets.
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I'm sorry I could have been more clear. The intent is to ultimately turn this lead into pellets and slugs.
I am curious if there is another step of processing prior to melting down and making ingots.
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If you use water to float off rubber make sure pellets are bone dry before melting.
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Just melting the lead will drive out a lot of FOD but get some 20 mule team borax to help further clean when you smelt. Sprinkle some and stir it down into the lead. Makes a mess but pulls out a lot of impurities.
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(https://i.imgur.com/W5cx6r7.jpg)
Last weekend project....
The dirty lead is about 7.5-8" deep in this 5 gallon bucket. easily weighs upwards of 150#.
Most of this was from JSB and NSA....I don't even want to do the math and convert weight to $$$$, lol.
I used a blower to remove most of the finer rubber and threads, but there's still a good bit in there.
I assume I just melt this down into clean ingots? Is there another step to reduce the rubber contamination?
That was a great idea using the blower! I just sorted similarly last fall. When I got down to the level you are inquiring about, I just placed approximately 10 to 15 pounds in a separate bucket. I then tilted the bucket heavily and used the water hose to flush out the small and floating remains while swishing the lead around with my hand. I then poured the lead into a strainer. This worked quite well and lead was clean enough for casting in the Lee pot, once fully dry.
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Check my math but 150 lbs of lead would be about 75,000 using 14.3 grain pellets.. I figure about 10 seconds a shot. So about 8 days to shoot all that lead. What fun!
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When we shot BB's in traps we used sand . With sand or rubber mulch or rubber beads ( we just used sand). Smaller then the BB's we could use a screen to sift out the sand and collect and reuse the BB's.
I don't know how uniform yoru "trash" part is if you could do that as well to separate what you want to keep from what you don't.
Go check a reloaders forum and see what the hey do to recycle and recast. Most all times the crud floats on top and you can skim it off.
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All great info, thanks for chiming in.
The blower was just a small Ryobi One unit that doesn't move too much air, I blew the debris against my garage door and the swept it up.
I may go one more round with the blower and see how it does.
Then (if my pot will ever get here) melt down a batch and see how bad of a process it is to smelt it out. I've already molded a few 125gr .357's by heating the ladle with a torch---and of course burning off the debris in the process. It is definitely not something you want to do inside.
Worst case I may wash it off, but there is a lot of fine dust that I don't want to lose.
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I use a dedicated cast iron pot on a turkey fryer burner to render out the nasties, such as duct seal putty and rubber mulch and other shattered target material, I bring it up to 1200 degrees then lower the temp, add borax then skim off the floaties, pour into ingots for my casting pot.
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I recently cleaned out a trap which had pellets and tiny pieces of cardboard and shoot-n-see target residue. Used an old lead pot on my fish fryer and ladled it into an ingot mold. I SHOULD have dumped it into a bucket and floated the debris out, but being in a hurry I figured I would just skim it off later. That was some really noxious nasty stuff as it burned off and when I skimmed it with a ladle (into a porcelain pie pan) it got more interesting as a gust of wind caused it to ignite releasing a BIG cloud of yellow foul smelling smoke. It was like a miniature A-bomb cloud. I had fourteen pounds in the trap and after a lot of skimming I fluxed the lead with some pine sawdust a couple times then skimmed again and poured it into ingots. One pound ingots are really handy when casting small caliber stuff- remember, there’s 7000 grains in a pound, so that’s basically a tin of pellets be it a 500 count in 22 or a 350 count in 25 per pound. They will fit in your pot easier too. Be sure to wash your pellet material before you start. No sense getting some weird lung disease from something that was in your trap debris.
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That rubber is nasty when it starts to smoke.
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All great info, thanks for chiming in.
The blower was just a small Ryobi One unit that doesn't move too much air, I blew the debris against my garage door and the swept it up.
I may go one more round with the blower and see how it does.
Then (if my pot will ever get here) melt down a batch and see how bad of a process it is to smelt it out. I've already molded a few 125gr .357's by heating the ladle with a torch---and of course burning off the debris in the process. It is definitely not something you want to do inside.
Worst case I may wash it off, but there is a lot of fine dust that I don't want to lose.
The fumes ,. Be in well vented area. And stay upwind ..lol..
Maybe good hot gloves to be safer never know when a oops moment pops up.
I use to lead cast iron pipe and solder copper and electronics. I think back and kinda wish I did not. May back in my birth to 7 she no telling how much lead paint was still around(mmmmm.. paint flakes are yummy). No just joking.
Just remember it's lead it's molten and releasing fumes to the air around you when molton/ cooking.
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This a picture of the 34 pounds I reclaimed out of a large rubber mulch filled tote by using a hose in a bucket tilted and swished by hand after sifting through a 3/8" square plastic mesh sheet. I was able to get all of the ugly stuff out with these two methods, and well enough that I haven't had a bad experience using the lead in the Lee pot. Very little to scrape off the top as well, but some.
I also had sort out an old rubber floormat worth of nylon. I used a broom to sweep off most of that when piled up on the shed floor. The blower method would have probably saved a little water, but not a lot as all had to be washed anyways. It did take a little time on a beautiful day outside, but well worth the effort in the end when needing to add lead to the pot in small amounts to keep the flow at a steady pace.
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I put a portion through a second blower session. A lot more debris was removed than I expected. It still isn't 100% cleaned, however when I melted down a ladle full it didn't flame up like it did before. It still smelled, but not as bad as before. This is the level I am going to leave it until the melter arrives, which has been stuck with USPS in St Louis since Feb 14.
I will add this. If I had it to do over again, I would look for a rubber product that did NOT have fabric/threads. the threads are what is the most difficult to remove. I've seen a video where some guys used what just appeared to be rubber ground to a kitty litter consistency, that would be the best to use in a trap.
Here is 25# after the second round with the blower.
(https://i.imgur.com/9mQH0GV.jpg)
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There is a finer particle rubber mulch , mainly used on astro turf to keep the grass upright. Might be worth looking into.
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Playground pellets
https://www.genan.us/products/pellets/ (https://www.genan.us/products/pellets/)
But like me sands free and sifts easy
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I wouldn't mind using sand as far as sifting out the lead, but sand is much heavier than rubber mulch to tote out to the markers and back. The problem I see with sand is the sand running out of the large holes formed by groups. I also like using the large chunk varieties of rubber mulch for the same reason. I guess there are different sands to be had, but I just don't think, having never used sand, that sand would be better than using rubber mulch overall. Besides, the rubber mulch is surely much easier than sand to recycle, which I also do.
With using 1/8" Luan plywood as a front face on my totes and screwed down, this holds the rubber mulch back for a lot of shooting sessions verses just the plastic tote lid.
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I wouldn't mind using sand as far as sifting out the lead, but sand is much heavier than rubber mulch to tote out to the markers and back. The problem I see with sand is the sand running out of the large holes formed by groups. I also like using the large chunk varieties of rubber mulch for the same reason. I guess there are different sands to be had, but I just don't think, having never used sand, that sand would be better than using rubber mulch overall. Besides, the rubber mulch is surely much easier than sand to recycle, which I also do.
With using 1/8" Luan plywood as a front face on my totes and screwed down, this holds the rubber mulch back for a lot of shooting sessions verses just the plastic tote lid.
I guess... I did not tote the traps to much pretty much set up and that's where it Stayed. Seemed like best I can recall for the bb traps only took like a 1" or2 o sand.
In the end it's what you find works best for you. I never used the traps to pellets just bb's. To reuse.
Good luck
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I wouldn't mind using sand as far as sifting out the lead, but sand is much heavier than rubber mulch to tote out to the markers and back. The problem I see with sand is the sand running out of the large holes formed by groups. I also like using the large chunk varieties of rubber mulch for the same reason. I guess there are different sands to be had, but I just don't think, having never used sand, that sand would be better than using rubber mulch overall. Besides, the rubber mulch is surely much easier than sand to recycle, which I also do.
With using 1/8" Luan plywood as a front face on my totes and screwed down, this holds the rubber mulch back for a lot of shooting sessions verses just the plastic tote lid.
I don't transport my trap, it is only used for indoor chrony testing. The old trap I just cleaned out was a 5 gallon bucket--over a few years it became 1/2 filled with lead.. The new one is a 30gallon plastic barrel filled with 6 bags (IIRC) of mulch. The target end is sealed off with duct tape. After several dozen shots in the same general area and it gets a hole large enough for mulch to leak out, I duct tape over the hole.
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So... I have a indoor 10m pellet trap that uses "Duct Seal".
Plucking pellets out is a sticky, gooey, mess but I do it with needle nose pliers.
I have several pounds of reclaimed pellets with "Duct Seal" impregnated... am I screwed?
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Some fun time with a shirpie
Would this work? Angled back to force pellet down sloped bottom on 4 sides to funnel in to empty bucket or catch pan.
No mulch or sand required ? Just take trap off and empty bucket or pan?
Sideways again , sorry
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So... I have a indoor 10m pellet trap that uses "Duct Seal".
Plucking pellets out is a sticky, gooey, mess but I do it with needle nose pliers.
I have several pounds of reclaimed pellets with "Duct Seal" impregnated... am I screwed?
Duct seal burns off, if done in an outdoor area to avoid the smoke and fire, takes care of the first need of any borax or sawdust.
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^interesting to know... thanks^
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I melted down 10 or so lbs of the lead yesterday. It smoked pretty good, but once melted the rubber was easily scraped off the sides and skimmed off the surface, then the fumes/smoking stopped----it was bad, but not as bad as I expected, especially since i didn't have to wait for all of the rubber to burn off.
Overall I am happy with the state the lead is in, it is good enough for now. Once my ingot mold comes in I'll turn it all to ingots and then the smelting process will be much cleaner.
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I finished smelting it all into ingots today. Along the way I've cast probably 40# or so into ammo.
This was the original bucket.
(https://i.imgur.com/W5cx6r7.jpg)
Here is the stack of ingots. I haven't put forth the effort to count them.
(https://i.imgur.com/A84jhaL.jpg)
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That's a lotta lead!-Will be a whole bunch of future shooting 8)
Jesse
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I put a portion through a second blower session. A lot more debris was removed than I expected. It still isn't 100% cleaned, however when I melted down a ladle full it didn't flame up like it did before. It still smelled, but not as bad as before. This is the level I am going to leave it until the melter arrives, which has been stuck with USPS in St Louis since Feb 14.
I will add this. If I had it to do over again, I would look for a rubber product that did NOT have fabric/threads. the threads are what is the most difficult to remove. I've seen a video where some guys used what just appeared to be rubber ground to a kitty litter consistency, that would be the best to use in a trap.
Here is 25# after the second round with the blower.
(https://i.imgur.com/9mQH0GV.jpg)
There is a product called purge used in plastic extrusion, it is basically pvc with +1/8" pieces looks a bit like kitty litter, but larger pieces. it works good for weight bags or gun rest bags as well. it would all float off.
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Purge (purging compound) is usually acrylic.
PVC does not play well with some other plastics and is really bad if to get too hot.
When it does, it will start creating it's own heat and degrade. Then it gives off (poisonous) Hydrogen chloride gas.
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I would be willing to try something other than the rubber mulch next go round, which will likely be over a year from now.
In the end, the mulch separation process wasn't too bad. One thing I will note is this 5 gallon bucket trap was long overdue for refreshing. Much of it was lead dust due to mulch being displaced by lead. The trap's volume had become over 1/3rd lead. Combine that with many, many rounds of 250-500fpe slugs and you have pulverized lead dust. Had I refreshed it much sooner the process would not have been quite as tedious, I think.
The primary reasons for my using this style of trap is simplicity, readily available materials, lack of noise (as long as you are shooting mulch, not solid lead dust, lol...) The only periodic maintenance is patching the duct tape sacrificial lid/cover. I very rarely use it for anything other than chronograph testing. it is not intended to be used as an indoor target shooting backstop.
I replaced my 5 gallon bucket trap with a 30 gallon barrel trap. it will be some time before cleaning it out, before then I'll end up buying a pig of pure lead from roto metals. The lead salvaged from my trap is a bit harder. The way I can tell is I have a fishing weight mold for split-shot, and the lead from my trap isn't very practical for this use, it requires a bit too much force to crimp the split shot onto fishing line. After seeing this I look forward to casting and shooting some pure lead ammo.
Here is the new trap. The old trap is the white bucket sitting beside it...
(https://i.imgur.com/yxMpp9q.jpg)
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I believe I would go back to the bucket. It is going to be quite the task when you do finally sort the 30 gal. I did reduce my four bag mulch bin capacity down after my last sort to probably a bag and a half, maybe two bags. IDK cause I reused the bigger chunks from the also sorted mulch. Sorting should be a breeze next time is my thinking. Hopefully that holds true.
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I believe I would go back to the bucket. It is going to be quite the task when you do finally sort the 30 gal. I did reduce my four bag mulch bin capacity down after my last sort to probably a bag and a half, maybe two bags. IDK cause I reused the bigger chunks from the also sorted mulch. Sorting should be a breeze next time is my thinking. Hopefully that holds true.
It has already gained a good bit of weight. When it comes time for the next cleanout, I'm thinking most of the lead should be less than a foot deep. I am hopeful that I can just shovel it out with an E-tool.....we will see how that goes.
The larger target area is a plus.
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I've been using this type of mulch from Home Depot, it is comprised of random angle shaped pieces which are not really that small, plus they float:
https://www.homedepot.com/p/Vigoro-0-8-cu-ft-Cedar-Red-Bagged-Rubber-Mulch-HDVCRMN8CB/203714941 (https://www.homedepot.com/p/Vigoro-0-8-cu-ft-Cedar-Red-Bagged-Rubber-Mulch-HDVCRMN8CB/203714941)
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You could use cotton cloth, but 30 gallons is going to be a lot. I found that I didn't really have enough old clothes to fill a 5 gallon bucket and ended up with mulch.
You may want a 20:1 alloy for casting, pure lead doesn't fill as well as the alloys. I got a slightly cheaper price from a company on Amazon for the lead I just ordered, coming in next week and I'll check hardness with the pencil method.
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I've been using this type of mulch from Home Depot, it is comprised of random angle shaped pieces which are not really that small, plus they float:
https://www.homedepot.com/p/Vigoro-0-8-cu-ft-Cedar-Red-Bagged-Rubber-Mulch-HDVCRMN8CB/203714941 (https://www.homedepot.com/p/Vigoro-0-8-cu-ft-Cedar-Red-Bagged-Rubber-Mulch-HDVCRMN8CB/203714941)
My trap has 4 bags of that same mulch.
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I believe I would go back to the bucket. It is going to be quite the task when you do finally sort the 30 gal. I did reduce my four bag mulch bin capacity down after my last sort to probably a bag and a half, maybe two bags. IDK cause I reused the bigger chunks from the also sorted mulch. Sorting should be a breeze next time is my thinking. Hopefully that holds true.
It has already gained a good bit of weight. When it comes time for the next cleanout, I'm thinking most of the lead should be less than a foot deep. I am hopeful that I can just shovel it out with an E-tool.....we will see how that goes.
The larger target area is a plus.
I was thinking of that as well but left it out. If nothing else, you should be able to shovel out the bulk of the lead and not worry about the small stuff until maybe the next time.