I am in California, and starting this later in life than I should have. So when I had an opportunity to gather a whole bunch of buckets of used JHP bullets from a local range a few years ago, I jumped on it.
I scooped them up, melted them down, labeled them as range lead, and stacked the boxes.
Went to cast with some of it last week, after having been sick the last few months. At first, I thought maybe the mould was dirty. Cleaned it well. Then I thought, maybe some zinc had somehow gotten in the pot. But on cooling, it has a really weird, almost fibrous pattern on the top. Then I found it went through a definite slush stage while melting or cooling.
Then I sat back and thought a minute. This does not act like lead. These bullets were from training sessions for the local dept of corrections. Bingo! Non-lead, eco-friendly ammunition. Probably Bi?
I have about 600 or 700 pounds of this stuff. It does not seem to cast right for bullets. And this range lead was all that I had of semi soft lead. I have a few pounds (certalnly less than 50 pounds, probably less than 20) of pure lead for the front stuffers. I have a couple hundred pounds of wheel weight alloy ingots, and some solder and a smidgeon of lino. But I am in sad shape for soft/semi soft lead for handguns.
Anybody local (because of the weight) who would want to trade me some lead for this, so they can make sinkers of it? If not, I will see about taking some samples to the metal recyclers, so he can analyze it. Bi is more expensive than lead, maybe get them to trade me lead for it?
Basically, watch out, there are apparently huge quantities of this stuff out there!