Spot lead price today is $2349.65/ton or $1.17/pound but that’s per ton.
Amazon has lead for $40.45 for 12.5 pounds or $3.24.
Lots of guys selling on the bullet casters site for $1.50 $2.00 per pound but who knows if it’s pure or what.
If I were buying scrap wheel weights I’d be a buyer @ .25-35 a pound unsorted. A lot of work sorting and refining.
Spot lead price today is $2349.65/ton or $1.17/pound but that’s per ton.
Amazon has lead for $40.45 for 12.5 pounds or $3.24.
Lots of guys selling on the bullet casters site for $1.50 $2.00 per pound but who knows if it’s pure or what.
If I were buying scrap wheel weights I’d be a buyer @ .25.35 a pound unsorted. A lot of work sorting and refining.
If you find scrap wheel weights at anywhere close to .35 per pound, by tons of it.
If I were buying scrap wheel weights I’d be a buyer @ .25.35 a pound unsorted. A lot of work sorting and refining.
I'd sell my mother to find wheel weights locally. Any lead that's not made of gold, judging by the price people ask. Scrappers around here won't sell any, either.
When I was buying wheel weights a 5 gal bucket cost 1 large pizza. The guys at the shop gladly gave it away in trade.
Then the local supplier mandated that they would not supply new ones unless they got old ones back. That killed the pizza deal.
Then, my state outlawed lead in favor of zinc, so that ended everything.
BTW, by my calculations lead WWs provided an 82% yield.
About 15 years ago I started buying EBay WWs and / or WW ingots for a yield price of about $2 a pound. When I reached a lifetime supply I quit buying. The last batch had way too many zinc pieces anyway, dropping my yield to 70+%.
Then sort it and cull the zinc, steel, clips and other junk. YMMV.
I used free or purchased wheel weights for many years until about ten years ago when such became difficult to obtain in quantity. I don't know anything about zinc, but the normal trash (dirt, clips, valve stems, cigarette butts and candy wrappers) was never more than about 20% of total volume, so you wound up with about 80 lbs. usable alloy out of every 100 pounds of raw "material". It's far from a difficult job to refine it into ingots.
Scrap lead should get cheap as lead water pipes get removed over the next few years.
Salvaged lead plumbing is a very good source, but it can be a lot of work. Build-up of minerals and calcium is usually heavy and provides plenty of work during melting, cleaning, fluxing.
But all salvaged sources require considerable work. Used wheel weights, used printing type, range salvage, all different challenges. I've used them all over the years.
I have an old cast iron stew pot that I use on a propane camp stove, outdoors during mild weather. Bought the pot at Goodwill years ago and this is all I ever use it for. Melt, stir, scoop off the crud, then flux and stir a couple of times and skim off the dross. Couple of old aluminum muffin pans make my "ingots" using a long-handled soup ladle.
Family ancestry goes back to Scotland so my frugalness is probably genetic.
Salvaged lead plumbing is a very good source, but it can be a lot of work. Build-up of minerals and calcium is usually heavy and provides plenty of work during melting, cleaning, fluxing.
But all salvaged sources require considerable work. Used wheel weights, used printing type, range salvage, all different challenges. I've used them all over the years.
I have an old cast iron stew pot that I use on a propane camp stove, outdoors during mild weather. Bought the pot at Goodwill years ago and this is all I ever use it for. Melt, stir, scoop off the crud, then flux and stir a couple of times and skim off the dross. Couple of old aluminum muffin pans make my "ingots" using a long-handled soup ladle.
Family ancestry goes back to Scotland so my frugalness is probably genetic.
My process too, been doing this for years and have a ton in round muffin tin ingots. Few years ago friend and I stumbled on a antique shop “ going out of business”. They had sevearl hundreds pounds of foundry type, bought all of it, we both have more than a lifetime supply. Friend with auto shop gives me old WW’s but the last batch only got 8 lyman ingots from over a gallon of WW’s. Another friend came over , we smelted WW’s after we thought the zinc WW’s were separate, wrong whole pot full turned Blue. In the trash it went.
I use sorted wheel weights and sheet lead from our scrap pile at work. My pot is a cut down gas grill tank setting on an old fish fry burner. Homemade handles for skimmers and a ladle, pouring the molten lead into muffin pans to cool, then dump them out. They fit in the Lee pot nicely.
I'm sure I have enough around here to finish out my days. That pile of ingots is maybe a 5th of what I have stashed in my garage I'd guess.
Wheel weights were $20 a bucket when I first started collecting them. Now days they won't hardly let them go at all, or they are asking $100 bucks! Too much zinc, steel and plastic weights mixed in for that! Not to mention the lug nuts, clips, valve stems & cig butts mixed in.
I couldn't believe lead ingots were going for over $2.00 a pound.
My buddy had me look it up after we did our annual melt.
He has a friend who is the best scrounge I have ever seen. Scrounge
is in his 80's and knows tradesmen in a radius of about 100 miles.
Because of this he can get "stuff". He needed 38 Special brass so I gave
him 15lb of processed Remington once fired to show my appreciation.
I have lots of 38 brass and being helpful has benefits.
Here's a Pic of the melt we did in October. 5, 5 gallon buckets
yielded a little over 330 lb. I got half and have converted 51lb into
projectiles. The good weather is about to an end so maybe another
40 pounds of bullets before I stop for the year.
Think what it costs to shoot trap an skeet now. A rich man's game. very few new kids coming into the sport. I used to buy hard lead by the ton under 8.00 a bag. Now it is 43.00 a bag around here. Lead had no demand. Now everybody wants an electric car
My dentist gives me all their scrap lead and is glad they don't have to pay a recycler to take it. It takes a large volume of the paper thin sheets to make ten pounds. If I were to resell it to shooters instead of shooting it, I would ask $1.25 a lb after melting it into ingots.
Lead is harder to find here in Kansas than it used to be. Wheel weights were free at one time, when a friend had a shop. He threw them in the trash anyway, so 12 pack of beer would get you a couple buckets that even in my younger years were heavy.
I thought I had a friend in the scrap business, and we traded back and forth, for years, Iron, Steel and Copper for his lead.
I always tried to work it in his favor, in an effort to keep him trading with me. Always took him scrap and gave it to him to prime the pump, so to speak.
The last couple years, he wont sell lead, or Copper, at all, to any one.
He has always had the personality of a junk yard dog, but we got along ok.
His Dad and brothers, were all this way, and the whole family always carried their friends in their wallets. I think he is stock piling, and feels the metals are worth more than money in the bank, in these days of instability.
Long story short, It was easy to get, so I never really stock piled, more that a year or so in advance.
Bad move... Now I have to really dig to find anything, and I am paying $1.00 to $2.00 per pound for any that I can get. I have several guys that keep an eye open for me, and I pay well to get what I can.
Good luck to you guys that are looking.
Too bad copper ain't as easy to process as lead is as I found about 25 lbs of these left over from decades of marine electronics work.
They weigh from over 700gr to about 210gr.
Probably a few hundred pounds of copper wire as well as thousands of red, blue, yellows and gazillions of coax connectors of assorted frequencies.
Young buddies still working will find this stuff useful.
Cash talks... but reels, other piscatorial paraphernalia and guns makes for smiles.
Think what it costs to shoot trap an skeet now. A rich man's game. very few new kids coming into the sport. I used to buy hard lead by the ton under 8.00 a bag. Now it is 43.00 a bag around here. Lead had no demand. Now everybody wants an electric car
Modern electric cars don't use lead based batteries
If you start using Lithium then it will be a problem.
If you are a hand loader you can load 12 ga down to 3/4 oz with no problem.
He reloads everything from 10ga down to .410 but likes 28's so
he can show off and upstage the 12ga Robert Stack wannabe's
at sporting clays. Usually runs 18 to 22 birds per round.
With the wind up here that's doing something.
I ran into a 4’ square x 2’ deep (estimated)box of scrap lead from an indoor pistol range. A guy allowed me to take a couple buckets(about 150lbs).
I need to reconnect with him.
I ran into a 4’ square x 2’ deep (estimated)box of scrap lead from an indoor pistol range. A guy allowed me to take a couple buckets(about 150lbs).
I need to reconnect with him.
I made about 4 trips a year to recycling dealer. I accumulate copper and brass in drywall buckets. Just inside his building he has scales and forklift bins for the various non ferris metals he buys. This is in a mill town on the Ohio River. It drives me nuts he won’t sell any metal. There were 3 major tin plate operations within 20mi. His lead bin always has chunks of tin in them. Dumb people think anything you can make sinkers out of is lead. Here on edge of rust belt lead is fairly easy to come by. I have over a ton of 99% metal in Lyman / RCBS ingots. I have some industrial ingots of 250lbs
I haven’t fooled with wheel weights for years. I’m going Lead & Tin all the way. I don’t shoot cast in anything that won’t handle. The softer I can get away with the better I like it. I probably waste Tin, but I got it for nothing.
I also have a lot of special alloys like Alumaloy, Babbitt, Pewter, ect.
I have a propane salamander converted to NG. Melt twice before it goes into ingots. I use tool stamps to label Lead, WWs, Junk Lead ? of unknown alloy, ect.
I have found a couple of facts after years of casting. For casting bullets for Target shooting go soft as possible for velocity, uniformity is more important than hitting some relative hardness scale.
#2, if you make spinner baits and buzz baits the pure tin will transmit sound much better than lead.
Lead WW are getting as rare as hen's teeth. One source still available is that bathroom vent on your roof. When I had my roof replaced a few years ago the roofer asked me if I wanted lead or plastic vent pipes. I said lead and can I have the old ones. So after explaining why every few months he would drop off quite a few flattened vents. Pure lead. Robometals is my other to go source. No free but reasonable and you know exactly what your getting with their different bullet alloys.
I don't know anything about zinc, but the normal trash (dirt, clips, valve stems, cigarette butts and candy wrappers) was never more than about 20% of total volume
Some states have outlawed lead. Zinc is the substitute. I don't know what zinc would do to a gun barrel, but its melting point is higher, thus normal melting practices when casting won't yield a good bullet.
Even if your state still uses lead WWs, if neighboring states don't allow it there could be a lot of the bad stuff mixed in.
Some have commented about using plumbing or pure lead. That would work for black powder balls, but not for boolits. It would have to be mixed with tin and antimony, or printer's lead, but those commodities are the real expensive ones.
Over the years I have found WWs to be quite consistent, and I have used it exclusively since the 1980's, in everything from .380 to .41 mag. I don't use gas checks in pistol boolits up to about 1000 fps, but I DO in every rifle boolit.
Scrap lead should get cheap as lead water pipes get removed over the next few years.
I doubt it. Every time I see the utilities digging I ask but they always have plans for it.
Any more, the answer is to just be frugal. I pick it out of backstops whenever possible, and I've switched to lighter molds in 38, which I shoot the most of. My 6 cavity 105 grain Lee SWC mold has been getting quite the workout lately.
When I still owned my shooting range I had a guy that came by once a month...I shut the range down for an hour or so while he cleaned out the bullet traps, and hauled away the scrap copper/lead...He paid me 6 cents a pound......Ben
Think what it costs to shoot trap an skeet now. A rich man's game. very few new kids coming into the sport. I used to buy hard lead by the ton under 8.00 a bag. Now it is 43.00 a bag around here. Lead had no demand. Now everybody wants an electric car
At our monthly meeting of the local shooting club last night, the Trap Committee Chairman announced that they were closing down their monthly tournaments (that had been running year round) for the Winter due to lack of participation, due to ammo problems. Not only is shot $40-50/bag (it was under $10 when I started loading in the '70s) but the big problem here is the cost of primers. We all hear about pistol primers here, but the shotgun guys are even having a worse time of it, and they use them up a lot faster than we do!
I'm glad I've got a lifetime supply of lead, tin, and the various other metals I need for alloys. Primers and powder look pretty good. Now if my health (at 72) will hold out long enough to use them up!
When the kids asked why they didn't grow up shooting Trap/Skeet, I told them to pay the range and ammo fees and we'd supply the firearms.
10 flights a week and it wasn't long before they understood.
Currently, $70/range fees and $90 for ammo.
Cost of Lead?
...Ben
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