xray room lead

[buttonbuck]

I got from my brother who installs MRI machines in former Xray rooms what I estimate 200 lb of soft lead. The 2 big walls and 4 pieces of C channel are encased in metal walls that are made of steel. The walls look like they are made of thick sheet steel (10 gauge?) like what you would find a morton building made of, only thicker. I know there is no risk of the lead having radioactive stuff how about the steel I plan to take the lead out tomorrow. How about the steel, will it hold radioactive stuff, it seems unlikely but would like to tap into the knowledge base of our great forum. I plan to junk the steel asap, but it looks like the grey enameled paint you see on old craftsman tool boxes. It would be cool to reuse this steel however it was in x-ray rooms. I figure I can get these walls 2 or 3 times a year.

 

[paulvallandigham]

Are you saying there is a steel wall between the X-ray emitter, and the lead? Certainly the lead will not be radioactive. And, I doubt that any steel behind the lead would even receive the x-rays. However, metal in front of it would tend to defeat the purpose of the lead, I think, as it would be both receiving and deflecting some radiation. The lead is used to absorb the radiation and neutralize it.

 

[buttonbuck]

imagine a sandwich corrugated steel on both sides (the bread) Lead is in the center the meat. I cant imagine the medical field would allow raidoactive walls but I am a bit curious. I heard a story about how in mexico some nuclear power plant scrap material was recycled into table bases and made into some table bases at a pizza hut they tested radioactive, but xrays are a way different than nuclear power plant waste.

 

[ohio ramrod]

It will be vary DANGEROUS to use! I am willing to protect you from the danger if you just ship the lead to me. I will dispose of it in a fashion that is completely safe to anthing except deer and targets. Seriously it is safe to use!

 

[buttonbuck]

cool, I figure I can cast about 6000 530 roundballs, or 4000 60 cal roundballs or 24000 311 roundballs or 3500 real bullets. One of the walls that is about 2'6"x7feet has a window in it. I do not see myself making this into ingots in one fell swoop the pot I use holds about 25 lb at a time. I think I will use the lee ingot mould and a 12 slot muffin tin. however I was told old teflon pans like the muffin pan release bad stuff if you heat them to over 750 f and the eat what goes in them.

 

[MercerLake]

:v I wouldn't use the Teflon lined pans as Teflon starts to break down at 400-450F and releases Phosgene gas. Small quantity of gas, but it may cause the lead to splatter when you pour it. The lead is safe if you don't eat it or drop it on your foot. Happy casting! :v

 

[mckutzy]

I recently made a melter pot and an ingot mold. The pot was a piece of pipe about 3"dia. about 5" high and capped on the bottom also with a handle to grab onto with tong or vicegrips . The ingot mold is a bunch of off cuts of 1.5" angle iron about 6" long welded to form triangle bars. now i estimate that with a hot source of heat and something like this u could melt that in no time at all. i will post my pot and mold later. this might be an option as i have a similar situation but with a load of roofing lead.

 

[Many Klatch]

I had 800 pounds of scrap lead from a roofing project to turn into ingots. A welder made up a lead pot out of 1/4" steel. It is 18" square and 12" deep. It holds a lot of lead. To heat it I put it on concrete blocks on the driveway. I heat it with a propane torch that is about 50,000 BTU. It will suck a 20# propane tank dry in two days of heating the lead.

I had to remove a lot of caulking and scrap copper out of the lead. But eventually I reduced all the lead to ingots. You will need a really big ladle to do this. Check out the antique stores and see if you can find one that holds about 5 pounds of lead at a time.

I had two sizes of ingot molds. The big one was welded up out of 1/4" plate and each ingot weighs about 30 pounds. The smaller ones I poured into a cast iron "corn dodger" pan. All those ingots look like ears of corn and they weigh in at about 1 pound each.

By the way, if you have someone weld up a large ingot mold for you, make sure that they angle the sides just a bit. It will make it a lot easier to get the lead out.

Many Klatch

 

[bob308]

what you have is pure clean sheet lead. why make ingots? just cut it into strips and use it as you need it the strips will melt quicker then ingots.

 

[Dphar]

The lead is safe.
if not it could not be disposed of to the public.
You can melt the lead down and cast into ingots or simply cut it it strips and put it in the lead pot if its thin enough to roll up so much the better.
I have an old large cast iron skillet and a big long handled ladle (about 30 pounds capacity) I use I cast lead into anything that will make a ingot that will fit into my lead pot. Old muffin tins etc. Propane camp stove will supply enough heat if the weather is warm and not windy.
If you do this a lot you will want something that makes more heat.
Dan

 

[paulvallandigham]

INgot molds are fairly cheap to buy, from Lyman or RCBS. But you often can find the cast iron muffin " corn dodger" molds cheap at garage sales, and even in antique sales.

We found that the smaller the "ingot" we used, the faster they heated up and melted into our post as we were casting, and that saved us time waiting for the lead to come back up to casting temperature. In fact, we once melted down(Up?) some junk lead that was very dirty and full of all kinds of debris in our pot, outdoors. Instead of using his ingot mold, dad went over to his flower beds, and used his fingers to draw grooves in the soil. The sun was baking the the beds, so he just tamped the soil down and rubbed a dampened finger over the them to create the grooves, and let them dry. Then we poured the lead into these " molds" and made some " Sticks" of lead that were about 1/2" in diameter and 10-12" long. They were easily cleaned off with the garden hose, and we made more grooves to cast more " sticks".

I would not bother making ingots from this source of lead, unless it shows a lot of debris. Its already been cast, which means that most of the impurities were skimmed off the first time it was cast into the bricks you now have. What would be the purpose of casting these large bricks into smaller bricks, particularly if you have to cut the large bricks down in size anyway? Why not simply cut the bricks to manageable sizes and feed them direction into your melting pot?

Having said that, The only time we had some truly large piece of lead, all we had was an old AXE, to use to cut the pipe up into manageable chunks. It was a lot of work. I would recommend using a band saw, or power hacksaw or even a reciprocating saw to cut up the bricks. After wielding that axe for an hour or so, I would go so far as to rent such a saw from a rental agency to get this job done with your lead bricks! :shocked2: :blah: :rotf: :thumbsup:

 

[buttonbuck]

you have good points about the lead being clean I guess I flux it in the electric lead pot anyway. We had a snow storm last night it is all gone now but will get to it tomorrow. The steel sheets seems held in place by of all things being brazed together with brass and a c channel and screws in the middle. Hopefully I can just pop out the screws and break the channel off with a hammer. I will let you all know how it goes. I have cast ingots but those were out of mostly dirty roofing boots, pipe and cable sheathing. When I bought the 40 lb at the junkyard I took tin snips and cut off the tar and old tin flanges.

 

[buttonbuck]

well got it all taken apart, the sheet lead was adhered to the walls with a tar like substance, adhesive. It being frozen up outside seemed to help with it coming free from the steel because it was frozen and shattered when hit with a sledge hammer on the joints that were brazed together. So I got what I estimate as 175-200 lb of sheet lead. The channel that held the walls together those you have sawsall apart to get about 15 lb of lead.