Melting Down Lead Shot to Cast

[gregthehand]

I've been looking at casting for a while but have been taking a long time to get started. Recently my grandfather, who used to reload for all his firearms, gave me about 120 - 150 lbs of lead shot in bags that he had bought for reloading his duck loads before lead was banned. Doing the math that comes out to over 6000 124 grain 9mm bullets.

My question is can I melt this stuff down to make bullets with? I assume I can but I figured it would be better to ask then just assume.

Also what's a good furnace? I see them ranging from $39 all the way up until the mid $300 range. I'd like to get just one and not have to worry about purchasing another one later on down the road if I can help it.

If anyone is around the West Houston area and casts their own lead bullets and wouldn't mind showing me the process please let me know. I already reload on a Dillon 550 and 650 and I've been doing so for a while so I think casting bullets might save me even that much more on shooting costs.

[Reloader]

better to trade for raw lead..better return on your investment; less messy and more economical. my opinion only.

[Jumping Frog]

Lead shot in bags is going to be dead soft lead, and not very useful in and of itself for 9mm. You'd need to add some tin, and ideally some antimony, to the mix to get an alloy hard enough for 9mm. I'd agree with selling the lead shot (which is more valuable than scrap lead anyway), and buying the scrap lead you need for bullet casting. If you don't want to deal with converting scrap lead to ingots, but some from The Antimony Man or similar competitive sources.

There are two distinctly different tasks that usually use different equipment. First, the conversion of raw scrap (e.g., wheelweights, range scrap, etc.) to ingots, which is a dirty job and you do not want to use a normal casting furnace. This is universally called "smelting" in the bullet casting world (although, a metallurgist would point out that strictly speaking it is not true smelting).

Second, there is the melting of the ingots in the casting furnace and the casting of bullets.

When converting raw scrap to ingots, people usually use a propane-driven source, like a stout turnkey friar burner with a large cast iron or stainless steel pot. Mine will hold about 125 lbs. of scrap wheel weights for example. This must be done outdoors, as it is smoky and dirty. Again, do not do this in a casting furnace because you don't want that crud in your furnace. Once you've made nice shiny ingots, they are easily used when casting bullets.

It is kind of hard to see in this picture, but I have a stainless steel bowl on top of a turkey friar for my smelting session. I simply use old thrift store muffin tins for my ingot molds. Each ingot is about 1.5 lbs.



I live in NW Houston and would be glad to show you.

[MoJo]

If it's "Chilled" lead shot, (very common for reloading shot shells) it has arsenic in it. When you melt it the arsenic fumes off and you inhale it. We all know the dangers of lead well, arsenic is even worse. Sell it to someone who will use it to load shot shells and buy the alloy you want to use. Better safe than sorry is my motto.

[Gyrogearhead]

To what Jumping Frog and Andy have said let me add that the "hardness" of your lead bullet directly affects your barrel leading. For any particular firearm and muzzle velocity there is an ideal hardness of the lead bullet that will not leave any lead in the barrel. Too soft and the bullet smears itself along the bore. Too hard and it solders itself to the bore.

When the hardness and lube are "just right" there will be no leading of the bore. As I said this varies from gun to gun depending on the cartridge load's muzzle velocity. Fortunately, for us this has been exhaustively studied and tables have been produced showing just how hard a bullet must be for a given situation. All that is needed is to look up your bullet and muzzle velocity in the table and get the ideal hardness range then add the right amount of tin and antimony to your melt to yield the desired hardness.

If you plan to cast only one caliber of bullit then you only need to determine the lead / tin/ antimony ratios once and you can adjust your hardness at the smelting step. But if you load for several different calibers you will likely want to adjust the hardness of your casting lead to the ideal value for each caliber. In that case you'll want to measure the hardness of your ingots and then determine how much tin and antimony to mix in for each filling of the casting pot.

I have found the easy way to do this is to melt the 5# bars of 70/30 lead-antimony from Roto Metals into little one ounce plugs and add as many as needed along with similar sized pieces of pure tin bar from the same source to my casting furnace along with enough of the lead (usually from scrap wheel weights) to make a 10# melt. So far I've had very good luck with this technique.

Hope this helps.

Gerry