just smelted my first range scrap

[odinohi]

I had a little over a 1/4 bucket of range bullets. Put em in my dutch oven and started heating. Seemed to take a little longer then WW's. Ended up with 36 little freeby ingots. I gotta get back to the range and find some more. Made a little more room in my loading/casting shop. Plus its saving some of my hard earned WW's.

[AJ Peacock]

I love range scrap, but have been looking for a lead magnet so I could mine the berm easier

AJ

[fredj338]

I love range scrap from my clubs outdoor range. I pretty much only keep the lead bullets & larger 230grFMJ for smelting. It's a nice way to extend your ww mixing 50/50 for most of my shooting.

[Gunslinger]

I love range scrap as well. I have created a siw which allows me to gather about 150lbs in about 3 hours. I mix it 50/50 with wheel weights for all applications... works well I think.

Yes I also feel it takes a little longer to melt than WWs. And range scrap stinks! Does anybody know what the yellow smoke is???

[evan price]

THe copper jackets act as a heat sink, is why you need to put more heat into it.

I've seen some bullets that had yellow powder inside them. Sulfer, looked and smelled like. I had a pot of dross that looked as yellow as Big Bird.

[Zbench]

The Yellow Smoke is Cancer Sulfate....!

[Ken O]

I didn't have any luck with range lead. Our indoor range is used mostly for PPC and National match course bullseye, so it pretty much .45 bullets. I took four 5 gallon buckets out, it had sawdust or whatever the target boards were made out of in it.

I put it in my wheelweight smelter and let it cook, and cook.....and cook. It just didn't want to release the lead, I think the saw dust acted as an insulator.

I offered the three and a half bucket here for free. A couple said they would get them, but no one did. I ended up buring it. I could get this every year and thought it would be an answer to the wheel weight shortage we were going though for a while. But, its way too much trouble and would take lots of propane to render.

[imashooter2]

This is the indoor scrap I get:



Melts just fine.

[waco]

i scored 200# of indoor .22lr range lead
happy with it so far
lots of dross though

[BSkerj]

I live about a mile from our outdoor range. After reading this thread I ran up to it and "mined" about 16 lbs off the top just to see how it smelted. What a nice suprise when I got home and cooked some up. Was able to make some nice ingots. Only took me about 20 min to get that much. I don't think anyone else is getting it out of the ground by the looks of it. I went back up to get more but tomorrow is opening day of general deer season and every shooting stall was filled with guys sighting-in ( nothing like waiting for the last minute).

I plan on heading back up Sunday to fill a bucket.

[ANeat]

If youre having trouble melting down the range scrap remember its a lot more dense than processing raw WW, meaning you will have a lot more weight in the pot than say a pot full of WW, Also remember if its a lot of jacketed bullets it will be mostly pure which melts at a higher temp.

Throw the heat to it and use it. Its all good

[leadman]

Don't fill the pot either, just a little to start in the bottm is good. Once it melts then add more.

[WILCO]

I put it in my wheelweight smelter and let it cook, and cook.....and cook. It just didn't want to release the lead, I think the saw dust acted as an insulator.

I've been melting my indoor range scrap with the old frying pan and hot plate.
Takes about 30 mins. for a soup cans worth to melt down and then I let it cool.
When it's cooled down, I just flip the pan onto a screen. The lead stays on top and the other junk falls through. When I get enough chunks, I melt it all down again and make lead muffins. It's a bit of work, but the price is right.

[Acronn]

When you melt range scrap please be sure to start out with the scrap in a cold pot, turn the pot on and let it all melt at once. If you are mining range scrap out of the ground, there is dampness in some of the scrap, and if you have a pot half full of liquid lead, and put some damp bullets in the hot lead, you might get a nasty popping that sprays bits of molten lead, and that is no fun on skin. So just be careful about it. I only melt range scrap from a cold pot because I'm not positive there is no water in the scrap. Then I turn the lead into ingots. Then you can be sure there is no water introduced into a hot pot of lead. Better safe than sorry.

[evan price]

I've been using a large aluminum scoop (like the hardware stores used to use for dipping nails out of the bucket) to add range scrap to the pot. I let range scrap dry in the sun a week or so before I do anything with it, and then pour it in slowly a scoop at a time. I also use a stainless steel car wheel cover as a pot lid, it goes right on after I put in the fresh scrap. It's thick enough that it reflects heat nicely and deflects any tinsel-spatter or pop-corning bullets.
I like to melt a range scrap ingot in the pot first before I add too many bullets, it helps heat transfer to have a puddle in the pot.

[Rocky Raab]

I just did 30# or so of range scrap. Mine sat drying in a coffee can for over a year as I added to it (I pick up five to 20 bullets every trip to the targets, and on days when I'm there alone, I can find pounds of them.) Except for the many jackets and gas checks I have to skim off, it is fine stuff.

Today is our "idiots with pie plates" day. Come Monday, the place will be deserted again, or nearly so. There will be a predictable few who swear their rifle must be off or they wouldn't have missed that buck Saturday (yeah, right.) But in general, I'll have the next month to mine the berm before the range closes for winter.

[zomby woof]

I just got 125 lbs from our indoor range $.08 per pound.

[Fugowii]

I just melted my first batch of range scrap last week. It tested out (ingot)
at about a 10 BHN. Got a couple of 'poppers' and one bit of tinsel toss but
otherwise not bad. I got 35 pounds of ingots when all was said and done.
It was from the outdoor range and I just scooped it off the face of the berm
so I think I got a much higher percentage of big bullets vs .22's.

[imashooter2]

Last week an associate dropped off another 560 pounds of the stuff you see in the wheelbarrow above. Hard to be bitter about that.

[shotman]

The jackets will sell for scrap brass. just run a magnet over the jackets to remove the steel ones. If you melt the ones from an outdoor range. cover your pot and wear a face sheild, A drop of water in one of the 45s is a bomb. I KNOW