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What is the oddest lead item you've made ammunition from?

L & R
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Brokennock said:
Why don't you just melt the lead off?
Click to expand...

Melting the lead off the bulk of the nails is my intent, I only pulled the lead off some to see how it mixed in the pot. I figure the nails will be like wheel weights with a little more waste (more steel than lead). I was just being silly before ;), I would have been disappointed if someone didn't call me out on it! :thumb:
 
Lead pipe from a Nevada brothel at Steamboat Hot Springs....
They didn't pay for some renovation work so our contractor boss told us to take what we wanted....
One of the guys took a rotating hotdog cooker & beer keg tap.
I wanted the pure lead for roundballs, even 50-some years ago :)

Dave
 
hawkeye2 said:
Toy soldiers when I was a kid. We melted them with a Bernz-O-Matic and cast them in a Winchester .38-56 mold.
Click to expand...
Yeah, did the same only we used a gas burner, and a .58 LEE minie-ball mold
Also got a hold of a pair of 1 lb. lead, therapy weights, used by a chiropractor's office for traction.
Mined the hill below a skeet/trap range once. The shot was too small and we ended up with too much slag on top of the melted lead before we had good stuff for casting. Probably saved us since we didn't continue. ;)
My buddy Phil and one of his cohorts got hold of a sheet of lead from an x-ray booth shield once. Made some more .58's. I could never get a straight answer from Phil's buddy if the lead shield was "up for grabs" or whether he swiped it from a construction site. :confused:

LD
 
Nothin' really unusual, just scuba weights, lead roofing, wheel weights, vent stacks, lead pipes, x-ray film backing, and fishing weights.
 
Really not sure what the first batch was. Found an "ingot" of lead where a large trash pile was burned. Slab of something with lead in it. Probably old tractor batteries.
 
Some years back, I took all the lead scraps I've found with metal detectors around Civil War campsites and battle sites, melted them down and cast them into ingots for later use in my originial Civil War pistol bullet molds and in the .58 caliber Lee Minie` bullet mold that I got for my 1863 SN&WTC contract musket. Kinda cool, shooting original Civil War guns with bullets made from recovered Civil War vintage lead!
 
Sidney Smith said:
For me I will have to say the lead scuba weight a guy gave me once. Said He was cutting a person's lawn and almost ran it over. He knew I made my own ammo so gave it to me.

What was your strangest piece of lead that you've made into ammo?
Click to expand...
=======================================================
I guess the 'strangest' lead I've used for bullet casting is the lead I got a while back while visiting the local scrap yard in search of wheel weight lead. Instead,the owner showed me some lead sheathing from old X-ray machines they had recently taken in as scrap and dismantled, and I bought all he had. It's all cast into ingots now and added to my lead stockpile.
 
I pulled a bunch of 22 long rifle bullets from dud rounds and then loaded 10 of them at a time into a sea service smooth bore pistol and just fired them off that way.
 
Any idea what this is? Weight seems right for lead, seems a bit hard to the nail test, but I do trust that test.
20190522_155356.jpg
It hasn't been turned into roundballs yet. Just found it in the process of cleaning out grandma's house. Would like to be more sure it's pure lead.


I did acquire more old dive weights today.
 
I got a bunch of the backs of the films from dental xrays. The dentist had to pay someone to haul off the hazardest waste, so was happy to give it away. Thin foil though.....takes fifty twenty billion manure loads of them to fill the pot. Kind of like cooking spinich. Takes a bunch to melt into a little. Also a little strange thinking they all had been in someones mouth!!
 
Brokennock said:
Any idea what this is? Weight seems right for lead, seems a bit hard to the nail test, but I do trust that test.
View attachment 11201
It hasn't been turned into roundballs yet. Just found it in the process of cleaning out grandma's house. Would like to be more sure it's pure lead.


I did acquire more old dive weights today.
Click to expand...
Use a quality lead hardness tester on it. If it is 5.5 or less BH, then it is pure lead or very close to pure.
http://www.castingstuff.com/cabinetree_llc___lead_testers.htm
 
I once received a cushion filled with lead balls used as a ballast in a glider... When they got some glider pilot like a teenager or so of which they knew he was not heavy enough, they placed that cushion on the seat to ad some ballast ... They liked those gliders back on the ground before the weekend was over I guess ....:dunno:
 
Ames said:
My ex-wife's heart. Finally found a use for it.
Cast it into round balls and let it kill something other than me for a change.:cool:
Click to expand...

ROTFLMAO!!!!!! I feel your pain, I had one like that as well. Of course I was the foolish one who allowed her to fool me completely, before we were married.

Gus
 
Brokennock said:
Any idea what this is? Weight seems right for lead, seems a bit hard to the nail test, but I do trust that test.
It hasn't been turned into roundballs yet. Just found it in the process of cleaning out grandma's house. Would like to be more sure it's pure lead.
I did acquire more old dive weights today.
Click to expand...

Are you familar with the lead pencil hardness test that has a link in this post? --->>> https://www.muzzleloadingforum.com/threads/shot-my-gpr-again.87958/#post-1116244



 
Brokennock said:
Any idea what this is? Weight seems right for lead, seems a bit hard to the nail test, but I do trust that test.
View attachment 11201
It hasn't been turned into roundballs yet. Just found it in the process of cleaning out grandma's house. Would like to be more sure it's pure lead.


I did acquire more old dive weights today.[/QUOTE






[/QUOT


Probably feels hard due to the paint. Did you test a bare spot? It doesn't have scratch like you're cutting butter. As long as I can put marks in the lead with just nail pressure I will use it for round balls. I think the concern over hardness is more so for conicals anyway.
Click to expand...
 

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