Hello from VA/NC

[Soundside]

Hello All,
I stumbled up this site recently and really like what I have been reading. I currently live in VA and recently bought a house on Currituck Sound in NC. I plan on retiring from Law Enforcement in August 2019 and will move to NC permanently. Since I recently purchased the house down in NC, I have been starting to learn about surf fishing salt water fishing. With that in mind I recent ordered a Pyramid Sinker, a Hot Lips and a Shad Head mold figuring I would be using them quite a bit.

I started pouring lead to make bank sinkers in my back yard when I was about 14 years old. My brother and I had built a forge of bricks that were just stacked together. We used an old lawn mower blade to balance the metal coffee can that we melted the lead in and used sticks as our heat source. I am currently 48 years old and still pouring lead. My set up is totally different now; its a safer setup and I make all sorts of jigs for personal consumption and to give to friends. I melt in my garage with a home made hood that vents out of the garage and a Lee pot. I have begun using a fluid bed and powder paint and hope to start tying some buck tail jigs for striped bass for this year. I used to tie flies and make dear hair bass bugs so I I have an idea on what to do but I have never tied large amounts of buck tail to make these 1 to 3 oz jigs. 

I have about 300 + pounds of 1 pound ingots, that my son and I have pored over the years. I have been having a harder and harder time getting decent lead lately. I just started to get lead from an indoor range. I give the guy a 5 gallon bucket with a gamma lid and he fills it 1/3 of the way (around 40-lbs) then wipes the outside of the bucket down with "Dlead" wipes and gives it back to me. It is nice lead but it has gone through an auger after the deceleration chamber of the bullet trap and the lead is broken down to little pieces to dust. I have been trying to melt this in my Lee pot but the amount of copper jacket and dross makes it quite time consuming to process. I want to do this quickly, and I want to do it out doors. I feel I will have the lowest probability of lead contamination by doing it out doors. What set up would you guys suggest for doing this out door? I am thinking a Dutch oven as the pot over a propane turkey fryer burner. I can dump from the bucket a large ammount of lead into the Dutch oven allowing me to melt large amount at once with an large surface area to easily ladle off the dross and minimizing the amount of times I need to pour the ground up lead out of the bucket. Any suggestions on which burner to get and where? I want to keep the investment low on this as I will only be using it for a short time.  

Thanks,

Jay

 

[AtticaFish]

Welcome to the site! Glad to see you post and sounds like you are a life long jigger...... should fit in well here. I do not pour myself, but sure sounds like you have a good system for breaking down raw lead into usable pouring material.

If you have history tying deer hair bass bugs, buck tail jigs should be no problem at ll for you. Just get some good strong thread, bucktails and a little flash material and you will be set for those. Flashabou is good for big jigs and midge flash is also really flashy but you do not get as much length in the package.

Look forward to seeing what you come up with. Post pics and questions as you go! -: Russ

 

[Soundside]

Here is a photo of my set up.

 

[AllenOK]

Welcome, Southside!

I haven't melted down / cleaned up recovered lead in a few years, but I use a similar setup to what you mentioned.  I've got a cheap outdoor propane burner.  It's a small deep-fryer model from Wally World.  NOT a turkey fryer!  I just use a small cast iron skillet to melt the lead in.  Either an 8" or a 10", I can't remember which.

I've seen a couple videos on folks melted range lead down to reuse.  They all seem to use cast iron dutch ovens, with a lid.  They say the lid is important, as they occasionally get a live round mixed in, and the lid contains shrapnel when it cooks off.

One tool they use that makes a lot of sense, is an all-metal "spider".  It's a cooking tool.  They use it to strain all the dross and debris off the top of the molten lead.  I'm going to have to find one, if I ever get back into recovering lead.  I've got about 200 lbs of ingots poured up, but all I do these days is pour split shot, and I haven't poured a batch of those in a couple years.

 

[Soundside]

AllenOK,
I just looked up a spider cooking utensil is exactly what is needed and the Walmart fish fry burner looks perfect. Thanks for that info.

The lead I get does not have can not have live rounds in it. it is the lead from when a bullet is shot at an indoor range into the bullet trap. The bullet hist the steel plates which are angled to direct the bullet into a 2 inch opening. once the bullet goes through that opening in enters the deceleration chamber which is circular and the bullet spins in that chamber bleeding off its energy and hitting small baffles which breaks up the bullet. the broken bullets are removed by way of an auger that also grinds whats left up. I get torn up pieces of copper jacket and lead crumbs and dust. my biggest concern is that the lead is very dusty and that is why i want to do it outdoors with a respirator. Being a firearms instructor, my agency tests my blood every 6 months for lead and zink levels. So besides health reasons I really need to be safe when handling this stuff.

Jay

 

[Kdog]

Some time back I had to break down well over a ton of lead, I used a wood fire and a 55 gallon drum. Having a very strong foundry background I set up a launder (series of baffle plates) inside of the barrel and a tap out in the bottom of the barrel. Once the lead starts melting and there s a pool of molten lead, contaninates will float on top of the molten metal, thus the tap out hole. I would feed the lead in the open end of the barrel some 100 pound chunks, some almost shavings some dirt and grime as well. once the melting got started, I could pull the tap out plug and pour a bunch of ingots without lowering the metal level below the tap out.

Keeps metal clean and I did it late in the day into total darkness so the smoke woud not draw attention. Yes, I wore an appropriate respirator. The dross was recovered and actually sold to a scrap yard, Sorry about the fumes, but a wood fire is not hot enough to waporize lead so I felt safe. I like your dutch oven idea but encourage you to figure out a way to drain from the bottom,

 

[Soundside]

I like the idea of a tap at the bottom of a melting vessel.  I just don't know what I could use. I am open to suggestions.

Jay

 

[Kdog]

I just used a piece of 1/2" pipe

 

[Jig Man]

Howdy from west Texas...

 

[Soundside]

Kdog,
did you cut a hole in the melting pot to pass the pipe through? did you do the side or bottom? How did you secure the pipe to the melting pot? What did you use as a plug?

Jay

 

[Kdog]

It was a steel drum, I just used the threaded bung hole and a 8" pipe nipple. Used a aluminum rod for my plug

 

[hookup]

Welcome to the site

I'm up in NoVA but travel south to fish the James, New, and other smaller rivers. Mostly chase smallies.

Have processed allot of lead, but nothing of the volumes I'm seeing here. Pouring jigs & tying's a hobby so if I process 20# a day I'm doing well.

Usually just use an old Lee's pot with the handle removed and after cleaning off the crap that floated to the top and fluxing with candle wax, just label the lead into muffin tins.

If someone gave me lead like you got, I'd sift out the dirt & sand, then just dump whatever's left into the pot. Time consuming yes, but effective.

 

[Soundside]

hookup,
I too have been limited to processing 10 to 20-lbs at a time, as I had intermittent access to scrap lead. I currently work at an indoor shooting range and I get the lead from there. The bullets have been broken up into small pieces, some down to a powder, from the deceleration chamber and then the auger. The dross consists of crushed copper jackets and impurities from the lead. I melted almost 40-lbs of this stuff yesterday in the yard in a pot on a propane turkey fryer stand. I used an old stainless steel pot that worked, but 2 layers came off the bottom of the pot during the heating process. It looked like it was made from one piece, but it was actually two layers fused to the bottom of the outside of the pot. Needless to say it wasn't the best, but it did work. I poured 27-lbs on ingots and had 11 to 12-lbs of dross. I then took those ingots to my Lee melting pot and re-melted them, fluxed them with the stuff from Frankford Arsenal and re-pored new ingots.  

Jay