I Sold 400lbs of LEAD INGOTS 

Thank you ill keep this in mind

In hindsight it probably would’ve been helpful if me to mention something like that. I wasn’t worried because I had specifically picked out the lead ones, this batch had very few wheel weights to deal with at all and the previous time I just skimmed them off with the steel clips before they melted BUT you’re absolutely right, and people should know about it in case they want to do the same

​@@thubprintrollyrelayman is actually incorrect. Zinc is completely immiscible in lead and floats on top, as well it has a higher melting point than lead. Due to these properties as well as silver being something like 200x more dissolvable in zinc than lead, adding zinc to lead pourd straight from ore like galena is a common, less toxic way of extracting silver from lead. It's a common myth not to mix them because people constantly stir lead, and if the zinc cools during stirring then it gets chunky and some lead can stick to it. But if you stop stirring, let the zinc melt, resolidify, you can just scoop it out. Or, you can save the time and just sort out weights that are marked "zn" as I'm sure you're already well aware of

@@thubprint and anyone else: if temperature is low enough the zinc weights won't melt, just float (for a while). I find that two or three zinc ones will mess up about twenty pounds of lead, more than that and it is a problem.

Great advice

Bullet makers comments says the opposite!

@@E-hab That is false for normal pistol and rifle bullets. Pretty much only paper patch bullets use pure lead. Just look up the hardness needed for different velocities of bullets. To make a mix sweeter, we add tin and antimony. Tin causes the molds to fill better for better details and antimony makes the lead harder. It is very easy to find forums filled with people talking about using linotype for bullets. The Castboolits forum is all about cast boolits. You have not read that many comments then. Now, most wheel weights are steel and zinc, so of course we don't want those. Zinc can not be easily cut with lineman's or side cutters, it weighs less, rings when tapped on a hard surface, often is somewhat clean or shiny, and it reacts with pool acid. That is how we sort the good from the bad. Lead weights are dull or dirty, have less or no ring to them, and can be nicked or cut with good cutters. In california, old weights are great but they are likely all gone from tire shops because lead has been replaced for so many years now. My uncle gave me all the old lead weights that were sitting in his auto shop because he doesn't do tire work.

I to am a muzzleloader shooter. And I cast my own round balls. I'm always looking for wheel weights but more and more over them now are plastic

@@greywolfoutdoorshomestead9962 the days of pure lead wheel weights are just a distant memory and today they are composed of alloys containing bismuth and/or tin and too hard for use in muzzleloaders. Haven't seen plastic ones (yet) but I will keep my eyes open for such.

@@greywolfoutdoorshomestead9962Iron and zinc wheel weights are sometimes plastic coated but they are not made of plastic.

Cool! I’ll look for a mold, I’d much rather have rods, they’d be easier to portion as well

Thank you so much! They don’t always perform as well as I hope but I really enjoy trying my best 😊

😊 CV

Nice, thank you! I was expecting to just throw the whole pile into a pot and put a lid on it, my hope was all the smoke from whatever leftover bits of sticks and leaves and dirt are in most of my skimmings would insulate the lead remnants in a reducing atmosphere and do a passable job. There is quite a bit of dirt and junk in the bucket. A bit of potash in the mix would probably go a long way though 👍

​@@thubprintfor a cheap easy test, drain cleaner is sodium hydroxide. If you know any pressure wash companies they should have sodium at least. Ones that clean restaurants will have both. I bought it by the pallet at a dollar or two a pound.

Also, I used to fix the rainbow shit by introducing oxygen. I made an apparatus with a regulator hooked to an air compressor and slowly bubbled the air through in a tall pot to oxidize out the bullshit. If you don't, then only what comes into contact with air at the surface will oxidize, trapping everything below away from the air. You could also do a fuckton of stirring but that's hours of work vs a couple min of slow bubbling

The pretty blue color on the finished ingots is a giveaway that they are hard lead or impure. Try lowering your temp to a few ⁰ above melting, preheat then cool your molds, and pour. They should harden quickly before the discoloration. People want hard lead, but if they see the color they are unlikely to buy online. Especially your big purchasers. This is just my experience though. It's not screwing someone by hiding the impurities, it's more like not letting someone meet the cow your about to make their dinner from. Hard lead is great for fishing weights or shotgun slugs and whatever, but the discoloration is just a turnoff generally

Regular wheel weights are typically mixed with antimony, but strip weights are usually the same soft lead as that sheet lead, so always process them separately. They're the lead weights without clips and come in strips of squares with some kinda adhesive

What kind of spoons? As in, what size?

@@superdud124 a regular tablespoon used for soup

Hi, the circuit board solderings give a pure product or a mix of different ones, thanks ?

@@maxcloutier5285 The circuit boards aren't for scrap, but part of my job. It used to be tin-lead solder, but is now lead-free.

Thanks man, hope you’re doing great!

Buy as in purchase not by as in by the way. Learn the difference.

@@ntal5859 buy the way thank you for correcting my 4 year old English education

You want trippy, try floating an anvil on mercury.

So the color isn't from a bismuth impurity? That was my first thought because I have never seen that color on any of the lead I've 🫠 melted but did have it on a bar of 'lead' that I bought from eBay as well as a lot of I guess the best description is a cottage cheese type of impurities that I assumed were other metals that had been mixed into the bar that had a higher melting point. It was some real grungy stuff.

@@ManMountainMetals no brother definitely not. Lead is so easy to over heat. Experiment take your rainbow bar and put back ingot mould. Then heat with a blowtorch until liquid then let cool and have a look and see you rainbow effect is still indeed a rainbow.

@empirefinds nah, it wasn't a rainbow. It was purple 💜. It also stuck to everything like glue, left a pretty thick layer stuck to the sides of the melting pot. The guy who sold it to me also sold various other low melting point metals like antimony, tin, zinc, bismuth, lead, and cadmium. I think that what I got was just the dregs and the dross of all those different metals. He had made everything into ingots you see and everything leftover, the skimmings or whatnot was probably what was in these bars. They only showed purple when melted, steely gray when cooled. Oh, and it turned purple immediately upon melting. There was still 3/4 of an unmelted bar in the pot. The first rivulets of metal came out silver and then glazed over with this purple film that I have always associated with bismuth. Real grainy texture, too, when it was melted, kinda lumpy. Like not everything was melting at the same temperature. I have 2 bars left of the 3 purchased, and I just use them as weights for my flasks when I do sand castings.

Copper coated lead causes the same effect ie lead from old boilers contain copper this Could be the cause you have to think about temperatures turning metals into gasses as bismuth has very low melting temperature it stands to reason it would become a gas very quickly making it very hard to alloy maybe lead would have worked done no research on the matter but has my attention now kind regards brother

@@empirefinds subbed

I didn’t calculate it into the totals as shown but over the two afternoons I spent heating the pot I used the same propane bottle, which had a little left at the end. I’d say just under $40?

Once you use something for lead metal, better to never use it for anything else.

I haven’t watched his most recent vid so I’m not sure how he’s using the term die-cast but I always use it interchangeably with the term zinc, which is also a misrepresentation because you’ll probably never find “zinc”. What’s usually found is an alloy of aluminium and zinc, very popular for casting because the melting temp is relatively low and it fills complex shapes really well. It’s also called “pot metal” or “zamek”. It’s a duller grey Color than aluminium, if you apply a solution of stump-out it will fizz and bubble, and it’s also noticeably heavier than aluminium would be. For me though, I always just look for the sprue marks: little circular spots that show where the material flowed into the mood and the sprue was broken away. Aluminium won’t have those.

Interesting idea! I still don’t have a plasma cutter so I’m not sure how well it would work but if I did, I would certainly give it a try!

Yes thats why there are loads of knacker from ireland in england nicking it of church roofs.

It could be a different alloy but I don’t think that would be cheaper or easier for me

@@thubprint Cool. Thanks for the reply.

It won't hurt your rifling at all

Thank you! I’ve been enjoying having the time to explain what I want to say succinctly rather than trying to remember it all while doing the thing simultaneously

I just list them locally through online marketplaces. It moves kinda slow but it does move