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Recasting roundballs
- Thread starter wolfers
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No I haven't but I thought about it a couple of times. I was thinking of putting a box filled with sand and placing the target on the box. I would probably have to make a stand to set the box on to get it at least waist high and then put a blue tarp under it to catch the sand so I could reuse it. I think a cardboard box might be the best thing to use, it's cheap and after 50-100 rounds depending on the size of the box the box could be taken to a recycling center, nothing is wasted that way.
paulvallandigham
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Mu club built a backstop made mostly of old Railroad ties. Then one spring, the farmer who leased the property decided to burn the weeds, and his fire spread to the ties and burned them down,too. We had many pounds of melted lead, which the guys split up who had casting equipment to make into balls.
If your backstop is a dirt mound, over the years the dirt will slide down, and wash out the lead bullets and balls. Often you will find a large chunk of lead where all the balls landed, and it only take washing it off thoroughly and then drying it thoroughly for several days in the sun to separate the lead from the dirt. Sand traps work, but a maintenance nightmare. If it gets wet, it now only gets heavier, but it swells and can break its contain after a time or 10. If you put in wet sand, it settles quite a bit when it dries. So, you will need to keep an eye on it. The larger the ball into the box, the more sand comes out. I have tried boards, plywood, paper, and combinations of them to extend the useful life of a box of sand, and concluded you just had to expect to shovel more sand every time you wanted to use it. A sand pile is good, if it is large enough. That's the rub. The rain will disburse it every time it rains, and that 12 foot tall pile will quickly be half that size. Obviously, it is less a problem if you build a shelter for the pile, and that is what some ranges do. Then they use bulldozers to push the sand and dirt back up into the pile every so often to keep the height up where its needed. Good luck.
If your backstop is a dirt mound, over the years the dirt will slide down, and wash out the lead bullets and balls. Often you will find a large chunk of lead where all the balls landed, and it only take washing it off thoroughly and then drying it thoroughly for several days in the sun to separate the lead from the dirt. Sand traps work, but a maintenance nightmare. If it gets wet, it now only gets heavier, but it swells and can break its contain after a time or 10. If you put in wet sand, it settles quite a bit when it dries. So, you will need to keep an eye on it. The larger the ball into the box, the more sand comes out. I have tried boards, plywood, paper, and combinations of them to extend the useful life of a box of sand, and concluded you just had to expect to shovel more sand every time you wanted to use it. A sand pile is good, if it is large enough. That's the rub. The rain will disburse it every time it rains, and that 12 foot tall pile will quickly be half that size. Obviously, it is less a problem if you build a shelter for the pile, and that is what some ranges do. Then they use bulldozers to push the sand and dirt back up into the pile every so often to keep the height up where its needed. Good luck.
my RB's are collected every so often from my setup here at home. I have sand as a backstop,though I have given some thought to building a backstop out of sheet iron angled down with about a foot of sand at the bottom to catch the balls. When I was a young fellow our ROTC unit in school had a system like this and it worked well. But back to the question.....yes,you can collect and recast the RB's you shoot,but don't expect to collect more than about 70% of the original weight shot. At least that's been my experience.
i seen a guys back stop in his yard that had a pit of R R ties built 4 high in the shape of a box filled with sand half way....he had a 1/2" steel plate laid in a frame of pressure treated 4 x 4's on an angle that would deflect the bullets downward into the sand....all he had to do was sift through the sand a couple of inches deep to retreive his lead....pretty neat looking too..............bob
You betcha. I lived in the same house for 27 years and shot into the same backstop on the back hill. Every spring I tore up the old wood backstop/frame (piled windfalls, mostly) & sifted through the dirt. I have a Minelab Musketeer Advantage metal detector I also walked through the woods behind for practice and to add to the lead stash.
The down side there is that .22LR casings also give a strong reading and my old technology detector can't "mask" specific ranges, just an adjustable threshhold cut-out for relative conductivity.
I have yet to build a "trap" at the new place, but I've been using the bank on a dry wash section of a creek bed so they're concentrated so far.
The down side there is that .22LR casings also give a strong reading and my old technology detector can't "mask" specific ranges, just an adjustable threshhold cut-out for relative conductivity.
I have yet to build a "trap" at the new place, but I've been using the bank on a dry wash section of a creek bed so they're concentrated so far.
At a couple of the shooting Clubs I belong to here I just wait untill after a heavy rain and then go to the bottom of the backstop(Usually a high mound of mud)The rain will wash the lead downhill it seems.I just do it for kicks.If I want to run lead I dip into the tons of old chimney flashings I have stored in one of my sheds.
MikeFromON
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If you can get grass or weeds or some other plant to grow on your sand pile like a lawn, it won't wash down so much. I shoot into a big pile of sand that is covered with weeds and it doesn't ever change shape or wash away. I tried sifting through the sand one day to find my old balls but none turned up. How deep do you figure they penetrate? I shoot a .54 rifle with anything from 50 to 100 grains of powder.
PitchyPine
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For winter shooting i shoot pistols into a snow bank, come spring there lays all the bullets on the ground with nothing but rifling on them.
Never tried it with rifles.
Never tried it with rifles.
paulvallandigham
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typically, balls stop within a foot, but they may change directions in the sand and disburse from the original line of trajectory. The faster a ball or bullet is traveling, the quicker it stops. I find most round ball inside 6 inches. But remember, all that energy is being disbursed, and you will be loosening sand above the impact site, and that sand will fall down around and in front of the ball with each successive hit. Grass and weeds definitely help hold both sand and soil into a mound, and fight the effect of rains, but a sand mound does slowly wash away.
Snow banks also work, but with rifles bullets and balls, you are going to have to find a very large snow drift to stop them. It does depend, of course, on the density of the snow and ice in the drift. Generally, you are not going to see expansion of the ball or bullet in snow, as it acts more like water than a solid when hit in its natural state. If it compacts, like ice, then it acts more like a solid, and you will see bullet deformation.
Snow banks also work, but with rifles bullets and balls, you are going to have to find a very large snow drift to stop them. It does depend, of course, on the density of the snow and ice in the drift. Generally, you are not going to see expansion of the ball or bullet in snow, as it acts more like water than a solid when hit in its natural state. If it compacts, like ice, then it acts more like a solid, and you will see bullet deformation.
PitchyPine
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The snow banks are generaly around six feet tall and ten foot or so across.
I am talking modern ammo, 45 ACP, 44 Mag etc.....
Snow seems to really slow them down, i have found 500 mag bullets as little as 40 yards down rage from the target in a foot of snow.
Will have to try it out with round balls this winter, which isn`t far off.
I am talking modern ammo, 45 ACP, 44 Mag etc.....
Snow seems to really slow them down, i have found 500 mag bullets as little as 40 yards down rage from the target in a foot of snow.
Will have to try it out with round balls this winter, which isn`t far off.
Can't remember where I read it but, "back in the day" the woodsman would just put enough powder behind the ball to get it to the off side hide on whatever they were shooting(deer mostly I guess) so that when they skinned it out they could get the bullet back to recast it. Lead, like powder, was a presious item on the frontier, both had to be conserved and in the case of balls, they'd be reused if possible.
CrackStock
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This will work if your range has a separate ML area or you take a lot of care in sorting out the lead that you dig up. Otherwise, you will get a lot of other metals mixed into your lead which can harden the lead.
CS
CS
