I picked up some more wheel weight lead couple days ago. Enough to make 40 lbs of ingots. I picked out 20 lbs of steel, zinc, etc. This was from a tire store in a small rural town. I have found that tire stores in large cities will likely not sell lead to the general public. Seems they always have some excuse. Maybe EPA is more vigilant in big cities? Best place to look in big cities is small metal recycling yards. But then the % of culls is much greater.

I could have got several hundred pounds but I only had one bucket and I didn't have much time.

I work on a military base that has a "Hobby Shop"(8 bay auto shop).

I have 5gal buckets full of wheel weights....I havent done anything with them yet.
I reload my own ammo, but I buy all my projectiles, I keep these 5gal buckets...just in case..lol

If you can find lead wheel weights you better grab 'em. Thanks to EPA regs, they are fast becoming a thing of the past.

If you do a lot of 'plinking', powder coated lead will save you lots of money.

Yep, with the demise of the lead ww, free or cheap is going away. So IMO, get more buckets & get all you can get. I am sitting on about 1000# of diff alloy & still looking for more at the right price or free. It is only going to get worse going forward. I have been reduced to berm mining for much of my alloy these days in lead free Kalifornistan.

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NRA Cert. Inst. IDPA CSO

I shoot 8-10K rds of handgun a year, virtually all lead or coated lead that I make. Yes there is a time investment, but I would rather cast bullets than work extra hours at my day job. 1000# sounds like a lot of metal, but occupies very little space around the garage. If all I shot was 200gr/45, that is only 3-4yrs worth of bullets. Casting saves me $1000+ a year.

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NRA Cert. Inst. IDPA CSO

I still find lead at farm auctions and such. Since I have almost 6 tons I no longer buy it. In the last 3 years I have bought almost 250 pounds of tin ingots though. Still haven't figured out why farmers need tin! I also buy that 50-50 solder though...usually really cheap

Anytime you want to get rid of some, usps flat rate boxes are very user friendly.

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NRA Cert. Inst. IDPA CSO

A small commercial bullet caster closed up his business over a year ago for lack of lead to cast bullets. He told me he was driving over a 300 mile circuit looking for lead. Became too costly to continue.

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H Richard
SWCA1967 SWHF244

I too am reduced to berm mining;and the problem is that the lead so collected is quite soft.It is good for any bullet shot at .38Spl or .45Acp velocity but for anything over 900fps I mix with linotype to harden it.But even lino is nowhere to be found nowadays.Ww,I gave up.It needs only a couple made of zinc to contaminate a batch of lead.Sorting them out is too time consuming.I buy shotgun pellets from guys who are quitting reloading(they are hard enough for mag bullets)and am considering buying a few tons of Lyman no 2 from foundries.That's how desperate I am!
Qc

Sorry I didn't answer this sooner. I have 2 shot makers here and I make 2 different sizes. Go through a lot of lead. I have made shot for many years. The reason I have so much lead is because I get 50 pounds of lead and give the person back a bag of good magnum shot. I am trying to stop making it. It is somewhat labor intensive...but I have a fellow bringing me about a ton of large size magnum shot to be made into nominal 7 1/2s. I get to keep half. Magnum 4's are a mix of about 94% lead and 6% Antimony. Add a little tin and it makes Lyman's #2 alloy pretty easily. I have 2 tons of 10-1 15-1 and 20-1 alloys in muffin pan ingots Lyman ingots and Potter ingots. I use the Potters in my Potter bottom pour furnace cause they are smaller and fit in that little lead pot. I mostly use it for single cavity molds as that ol thing only accepts about 6 or 7 pounds of lead.

I also trade lead for bullets with a few guys. At a 3-1 ratio, it works for me. I am casting bullets anyway, adding another 1000 isnt a big deal & i can pick up 60# of alloy for my own needs.

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NRA Cert. Inst. IDPA CSO

3 to 1 is a good ratio of return. You are going better than me for certain..

It works for me. Some guys will scrounge but just dont want to cast. Fear of the unknown i suspect, but there is a time element too.
With a 4cav mold i am running about 14 bullets a minute when everything is hot & ready to go. So about 90 min for 1000 bullets. Another 90 min to coat & size. Consider $100/k avg for commercial, not a bad hourly net wage. Plus i enjoy cast more than working or reloading.

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NRA Cert. Inst. IDPA CSO

A bit better than 30 bucks per hour ain't bad Heck in this time/stage of my life 25 bucks an hour is exceptional. With the stuff I sell on ebay I do better than that but...that isn't including finding the stuff I sell. Bought a nice Colt Trooper Mk III today...Sold it in 10 minutes for a hundred dollar profit...but that only happens every now and again. In a few days I may list a few S&W items in one batch. Have to sort through the whole mess. I had a friend back east who I got into making shot on shares...He told me he was making more money making shot than before he retired. Unfortunately he was killed in a hunting accident. Where all the lead comes from I don't know. I still have real wheelweights brought to me and another fellow brought me almost 55 gallons of mined shot. When it got all melted into ingots there was almost 200 lbs of dirt in it. It was what the mining company considered unusable for shooting. Guy bought it for 10 cents a pound. An awful lot of lead in a 55 gallon barrel. I made ingots out of my share and he paid for the melting down. I still have more than a thousand pounds of lead pipe back east on the farm.