reclaiming lead from car and motorcycle batteries

[andy2175m4]

Tie battery to a rope and haul it up a tree.

Place corn on ground under battery.

Deer eats corn.

Drop battery on deer.

Eat deer.

good idea, save you the trouble of making bullets out of battery lead.

 

[Rob M.]

Very interesting post . I had always wondered about lead in batteries . Appreciate all the info folks ... Defiantly not messing with them .....

 

[Scota@4570]

I recently came across 58 lbs of #8 shot, a life time supply of casting lead, NO MORE car batteries for me !

Shot is not a good thing for casting. First shot is very expensive, more than pure lead. Second shot has antimony in it. You do not want that in you ML balls. The antimony will make it cast worse and not fill the mold right. Antimony will make the balls harder. Antimonial alloys need Tin to cast well. Such an alloy is great for center fire but not MLs. Tin is very expensive.

 

[64Springer]

So many urban legends. The 2% antimony found in clip-on wheel weights won't hurt a damn thing when it comes to muzzleloader bullets.

You can drop a clip-on wheel weight on the ground, and it will bend and it will dent. They are very easily cut with tin snips. They are soft.


Also, Lyman #2 is 90 lead, 5 tin and 5 antimony.

It makes the prettiest and most effective bullets anyone has ever seen.

And it's why Lyman #2 is a true staple in the bullet casting world.

 

[shorthair]

Haven't used battery lead in years, but when I used to melt them the lead was hard enough for magnum pistol use so far from dead soft. Plus I always melted outdoors with a breeze behind me.

 

[shorthair]

Not worth the hassle.
Pick up roof vents.
They melt VERY easy.

View attachment 250495

Once upon a time I had around 5 tons of those pipe jack's, beautiful dead soft lead melted down into muffin tins and filled 8 barrels full and all free.

 

[BJHabermehl]

I took apart an AGM motorcycle battery and had no trouble taking the plates out and neutralizing the acid, but the plates would not melt, it was so strange, the posts and the cell jumpers melted nicely into good clean lead, but the plates would not melt, they es..just turned into a mush of red, iron-oxide looking junk. any idea whats up with t what ? By the way whats nice about AGM batteries (absorbed glass mat) is they dont have any liquid in them, just glass mats impregnated with a gell form of acid, so you can do whatever with them and they never spill. but the plates dont melt ....

odd....

The only source of worth while source of lead I’ve seen is industrial forklift and equipment batteries. The cell ties and posts are all that’s worth messing with. The lugs with the copper cables imbedded are too dangerous to mess with as the inevitability have moisture in the wire, causing steam explosions in your lead pot. The lead will have about 5 percent antimony. Real nice for balls for smooth bores, or for making shot. I was a forklift mechanic for the last 15 years before I retired. BJH

 

[hawkeye2]

I was a service manager for a forklift company for a couple of years and have quite a number of pounds of the connector straps which I've never used for projectiles. You believe they are 5% antimony?

 

[BJHabermehl]

I was a service manager for a forklift company for a couple of years and have quite a number of pounds of the connector straps which I've never used for projectiles. You believe they are 5% antimony?

Yes that is what DEKA uses for their batteries for spare connectors. I got that information from their literature. I believe Enersys uses the same alloy, it handles the same. BJH