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September 12, 2015, 09:29 PM | #26 | |
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787 degrees
Quote:
Zinc WW can be culled/sorted before smelting, cast zinc WW are hard, much harder than the lead ones. The steel ones are obvious, they are of course magnetic. Lead clip on WW have the steel clip, but a magnet sticking on the end of the WW means it's steel. Zinc is NOT magnetic.
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September 26, 2015, 02:46 PM | #27 |
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I have been concerned about this for a while, that's why I have a LARGE stash of lead and lead alloys on hand. I'm a bit of a Prepper so even if I don't use it right away, it still worth keeping around.
I can still buy pure lead in ingot or scrap form, lately I have been buying pure scrap lead in 25lb. lots for $1.50/lb. I bought a large lot of Linotype lead at auction many years ago, I mix it 50/50 with pure lead plus a little extra tin and get an alloy that makes very good bullets, almost exactly Lyman#2
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October 21, 2015, 01:19 PM | #28 | |
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October 22, 2015, 01:20 PM | #29 | |
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F. Guffey |
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October 22, 2015, 01:27 PM | #30 |
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Then there is Flint, Michigan (I think). Seems they decided to save money, they switched from using water from Detroit to water from a near-by river. Something went very wrong, seems their process for treating river water caused leaching of lead from old water pipes.
Reminds me of the Sargent that declared he was immune from some diseases because he was a Sargent. F. Guffey |
October 22, 2015, 01:55 PM | #31 | |
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October 22, 2015, 02:01 PM | #32 |
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Consider scrounging old car batteries. Even at a buck apiece, they're still a bargain. The so-called hazardous material inside is sulfuric acid. Treat it with caution like any other highly corrosive acid. Once a battery is drained, break the case open; Plenty of lead inside and most certainly a dollar's worth if you had to buy them from your neighbors.
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October 22, 2015, 02:30 PM | #33 | ||
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What you should be worried about are the trace elements present in and on the plates of the battery. Just a short list of some of the dozens of toxic and/or highly poisonous things that you expose yourself (and your neighbors and family) to when melting lead-acid batteries: Cadmium Strontium Arsenic Zinc (the gaseous form of zinc is incredibly toxic) And, heating residual sulfuric acid will release hydrogen, which forms ammonia, which then reacts with other trace elements to form such wonderful things as arsine and stibine gases -- gases so poisonous that the Nazis experimented with them in their execution chambers. (They only stopped because the 'rotten egg' smell was too strong and might have offended nearby villagers.) I think Brian Williams summed it up best when the topic of smelting car batteries came up on The High Road: Quote:
Modern "Maintenance Free" and low maintenance batteries have very different plate designs than traditional lead-acid batteries. You essentially have to vaporize the lead in order to release it from the iron alloy plates, but there is no "hobby level" method for recapturing the (highly toxic) lead fumes, in order to put the element to use. It's just a waste of heat energy, a waste of your time, and a great way to poison yourself or your family. Oh, and if you get caught doing it outside of an approved reclamation facility, it's a $20,000 minimum fine...
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October 22, 2015, 03:17 PM | #34 |
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You can still find lots of lead on E-Bay. Normally in 65 lb loads. I had about 500 lbs of lead until last week. I sold my casting equipment and all my lead because I gave up on casting do to health reasons.
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October 22, 2015, 04:18 PM | #35 | |
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October 22, 2015, 07:35 PM | #36 |
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when i first started casting, i guess maybe 3 years ago, not sure.....however long ive been a member here. anyway, i just spent a couple weeks going to little tire shops and asking for their used lead, in that little time i have amassed enough lead to literally last the rest of my life. i offered up 20$ for a 5 gallon bucket, some said okay, some said give me 30$ and some wouldn't accept the money at all. i did get a nice score at a metal recycling place, the had a 50 gallon drum full of sheets of pure lead, he wasn't sure what to charge since he never dealt with lead, had been sitting for many years. i bought 150# for 30c a pound. i still return to two of the tire shops that sold me lead in the beginning, and trade boolits for his buckets of lead.
i personally thought i would need way more lead, in the beggining, than i actually do. i have sold off about 3-400 #s and still have over a thousand pounds that i have very little $ invested in. i would think anyone could do the same thing if you have the willingness to do the footwork.
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October 23, 2015, 10:01 PM | #37 | |
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I have read that there are no longer any lead mines/smelters operating in the US, if that be true then the price of the lead that is available will also rise. I have been casting since about 1963 and I can attest that lead has gotten a lot harder to find over the years. |
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October 23, 2015, 11:58 PM | #38 |
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I haven't done batteries in probably 20 years. At the time, I got a pretty good amount of lead out of them. Times have changed, I guess.
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October 24, 2015, 12:16 AM | #39 | ||
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Quote:
The plates in "lead-acid" batteries are primarily iron, now, with coatings of various trace elements to prolong plate life. There's still lead, but nowhere near as much as there used to be ... and it's much harder and much more hazardous to attempt to extract. Quote:
However, lead has always been one of the most-recycled materials (right behind steel and aluminum). There is enough lead in circulation in the United States, that not having a constant supply of "new" lead is not a problem. Add to that the fact that we're still importing plenty of lead from countries that do have active smelters (such as Canada, China, and Australia), and there's no reason for the market to suffer. Lead is actually cheaper now than it was before Doe Run closed (the last active U.S. smelter).
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October 24, 2015, 07:04 AM | #40 |
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Well that's good news. I hope that lead remains generally available.
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October 24, 2015, 09:10 AM | #41 | |
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Quote:
F. Guffey Last edited by F. Guffey; October 24, 2015 at 11:33 AM. |
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October 24, 2015, 04:28 PM | #42 | |
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October 24, 2015, 10:30 PM | #43 | |
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However, if you call around to your local salvage yards, you'll find that the price of lead is down. ...Aside from the spot price having dropped, as well. (China isn't using anywhere near as much as they were a few years ago, so there's excess on the international market, which impacts the overall lead market.) I know it's not an option for some people, but I even have more than one local yard that will sell to the public. ("Take a look around and come find us if there's something you like.") There's still plenty of lead flowing through salvage yards, that isn't wheel weights. For 'smalls' there's everything from lead pipes, to lead flashing, to lead plumbers joints, and more; and for 'large' items, there's everything from 5-ton crane counterweights, to 300 lb babbit bearing blocks, to 4,000 lb pallets of linotype, monotype, and other printing scrap. It's still out there, it's just harder for some people to find a willing seller. And, unfortunately, some yards do have "all or nothing" policies. Right now, there's over 20k lbs of linotype and monotype sitting in 48 gallon drums at one of my local yards. The operator, however, won't sell me anything unless I take it ALL. Not only do I not have that kind of cash available in the 'hobby' budget, but I can't store it, either.
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Don't even try it. It's even worse than the internet would lead you to believe. Last edited by FrankenMauser; October 24, 2015 at 10:37 PM. |
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October 26, 2015, 04:51 AM | #44 |
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Cripes, yesterday I went to visit the surviving son and widow of a club member to pick up some lead. There must have been about 2 tons of scrap lead in the form of pipes and wheel weights at the house, in addition to a number of ingots already smelted down. Dude gave me 6 buckets of wheel weights. There were many, many, lengths of lead pipe, which I was told is pure lead for musket balls and the like.
Maybe I need to revise my estimate to something like 3 or more tons of lead. Now I have to figure out what to do with all this. Don't have a smelting outfit at the moment, but as time permits I will have to get one. I had thought to try to find someone who can smelt all this down, perhaps in exchange for half of it. I reckon each of those 5 gallon buckets holds more than 100 pounds, and there are 6 of them. I suspect I am going to be ok for lead for quite a little while. |
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