Got Lead?

[Sylvrfalcn]

I mentioned in another thread that I've taken an interest in trying my hand at fishing as it would have been done on the Lewis and Clark expedition. Them boys kept detailed records of equipment purchases, since every penny had to be accounted for. Fishing hooks and lines are noted among the provisions, but not poles, bobbers, or weights/sinkers. It's assumed that these last three would be fabricated as needed in the field.
Pole, no problem, can cut one in the woods. Bobber, no problem either, can use an old wine cork, or whittle one out of bouyant wood and grease it with bacon fat so it doesn't water log too quick. But what about sinkers? It's been conjectured that they made their own out of bar lead. They carried lead bars from which to cast bullets for their firearms, since it was easier to keep track of than a large quantity of shot in various calibers. Old timey traders and trading posts also carried bar lead, but, uh, there ain't one around in the 21st century, so I was kind of stuck.
Then I got unstuck by remembering what a friend who did a lot of reloading taught me back when I was a young fellow. Lead wheel weights off cars and trucks can be melted down and cast into fine bullets. They're also free and easy to "harvest". We'd just take a bucket and poke around railroad crossings until we'd picked us up a bucket of lead. Apparently the bouncing and jarring of crossing the tracks shakes 'em loose from the wheels of vehicles, as the ground around most crossings is virtually littered with 'em.
Jumped in the truck this morning and headed down to a railroad crossing. Came back with a year's supply of "fishing weights" and a couple of rusty railroad spikes that were lying loose on the ground. Railroad spikes have a multitude of uses around the camp or homestead, we used to drive 'em into clay riverbanks to anchor the ends of trot lines when I was a boy.
So, got lead? Why not, it's free. *NOTE: It's also toxic, do not eat, drink, smoke, or "chew" when handling it, and wash your hands thoroughly with soap and water when done. Most of us know that, but had to put it out there just in case.

Sarge

 

[ddean]

"Lead wheel weights" RR

! great idea !

How big are these?
...[:foot: oops...problem of skimming rather than reading---
saw 'cars' & though RR-Cars......
Was wondering why I'd never seen a RR-Car weight while hunting spikes.]...

I'm guessing bigger than car wheel weights
which are pretty common everywhere that cars venture.

& I've heard that Tire Stores have tubs of old ones piling up
until someone claims them.

Large lead fishing sinkers at the local sports store are pretty cheap
if you want to buy a half-pound or larger 'sinker'
& cut or melt it down.


<> THEY call me 'Dean' <>

<> Caution: Not all ideas vented from this brain are entirely based on empirical data. JMO-M2C-fWiW-iIRC-YMMV-fYI-TiA-YW-GL
<> Noobee <> Tips <> Baha'i Prayers Links --A--T--H--D

 

[ferguson]

Dean, Sarge is talking about car wheel weights. When the cars go over the tracks, sometimes they fall off. Good observation about tire shops. I'll bet you could scarf them up there too.

Sarge, you ould scrounger, I'm proud to know ye.

Steve

 

[Sylvrfalcn]

Can't get cheaper than free Dean, and there's no need for melting/casting. All a fellow needs is a stump, an old butcher knife, and a baton. Cut off a chunk of about the right size, trim as necessary, and then split it 3/4 of the way through so you can crimp it on your line. Seen a lot of old timers crimp weights on their line with their teeth, even before I knew better than that, I knew better than that.

Sarge

 

[Sylvrfalcn]

Dean, Sarge is talking about car wheel weights. When the cars go over the tracks, sometimes they fall off. Good observation about tire shops. I'll bet you could scarf them up there too.

Sarge, you ould scrounger, I'm proud to know ye.

Steve

"Old scrounger"? I've been accused of looking kind of scroungy, wondered what that meant.

Sarge

 

[Ad Astra]

Wheel weights make great cast bullets, too, due to the antimony content.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimony



Mike

 

[Mike L.]

I used to cast and shoot my own bullets in silhouette competition years ago. Wheel weights are an alloy of lead, tin, and antimony. A little tin added makes them cast better. Antimony makes the alloy harder than pure lead.
For Sarge's purpose, pure lead would be better. If you can find an old house or other structure that's being demolished, get the old lead pipe. It's pretty darned soft.

Finally, a topic I know a little somthin about.

--Mike L.

 

[Yvsa]

If you can find an old house or other structure that's being demolished, get the old lead pipe. It's pretty darned soft.

Finally, a topic I know a little somthin about.

--Mike L.

Yeah and the old cast iron waste pipe was sealed with oakum and then lead. The oakum was a tar coated hemp that was packed in really tight with an offset chisel looking tool.
Then a seal was placed around the cast iron pipe and locked into place. It was a round piece of somethin with a well parrafined fabric around it and when it was locked into place it left a small opening that the molten lead could be poured into.
When it hardened, almost instantly, the excess was cut off from where the lead was poured and then another set of offset tools were used to tamp the lead in tight thereby sealing the joint for dayumed near forever.
My grandpa was one of the last old plumbers that could still make up a solid lead and solder waste pipe. The lead pipe was cleaned usually by scraping with a pocket knife and then molten solder was "wiped" around the joint where two lead pipes were joined together. The wiping pads were handmade by my grandpa out of what folks used to call "pillow ticking cloth."
It was a somewhat heavy cloth that was tightly woven so to be able to hold feathers inside.
Grandpa would fold several layers together after dipping them in melted parrafin.
The parrafin kept the hot solder from burning the cloth up too badly but they did wear out after a while.
Not many folks remember the days of lead waste pipe.
Our house was built in the '60's and has lead waste and cast iron soil pipe.
Thank god for rubber couplings because one of the wiped soldered joints broke on our lead waste years ago.
If it weren't for the rubber coupling it would have cost us a mint to have that old lead waste replaced!!!!
I don't know if the pure lead can still be bought at a plumbing supply house or not.
It used to come in 25 pound ingots that were 5 five pound weights connected with a small lead bridge.

 

[ClintB]

When I started working for the phone co. one of my first jobs was wrecking out aerial cable. To increase the distance they could send signal, they used load coils to boost the signal. The housings they used in the air were pure lead. All I had to do was gut them and I had 30-40 lbs. per housing. I gave a bunch away but still have a dozen or so. I've never cast bullets but I did a lot of fishing wieghts and jigs.

 

[Sylvrfalcn]

My "experimental archeology" this evening yielded a half dozen serviceable fishing sinkers in about five minutes. An Old Hickory knife was used with a baton to cut the lead on a stump. I've assembled two complete rigs, handforged hooks, handmade sinkers, wine bottle cork bobbers, etc., along with a small tin containing several spare hooks and sinkers, and I'm headed to the river before daybreak tomorrow for some T&E. I'll rig a pole for one rig, and handline with the other for some comparative testing. I'll be smoking my homemade pipe, and lighting it with my homemade flint and steel, and gutting the fish I just know I'll catch with a homemade knife. Good stuff, my "inner child", as the touchy feely folks would put it, is turning backflips.

Sarge

 

[Dave Rishar]

Wheel weights are my preferred material for bullet casting. As Sarge mentioned, they're free if you look around a bit. Evidently there's a law on the books that precludes tire shops from just giving them away but not all of them know about it. (Or care about it.) I've only found one locally that gives them to people off the street but I'm working on another. Most of them sell their stock to some battery company evidently which is unfortunate for us bullet casters; it's not easy to find arsenical lead alloys without paying an arm and a leg and with the loads that I use, heat treating is mandatory.

Sarge, I got a kick out of your story about batoning the lead; I had to process 50 pounds of scrap plumber's lead (in sheet form) into sections small enough to melt in my 10-lb. pot. I wound up using a block of wood and the Satori Special to chop it up; the spine was used for hammering the sheets into billets that could be jammed through the top of the pot. It was hell to clean up afterwards but it got the job done quickly.

Wheel weight warning: not all of them are lead. In my last fifty pounds or so I dug out about ten of them that were either zinc or copper. If you keep the melt temperature just over that of the lead itself other metals aren't a concern. Actually, in the case of fishing weights, a little zinc in the mix still probably isn't a concern. You could probably even get away with battery plates but I wouldn't want to melt those unless I was outside in a stiff breeze with a respirator on.

This weekend I'm going to hit the local railroad crossings. That's a useful tip.

 

[The_Shadow]

I use lead to cast balls for my muzzleloader, and you can get it from muzzleloading sources. For my purposes, the wheel weights are no good because I need pure soft lead to ram down the barrel. Here's a good place to get lead from:
http://www.turkeyfootllc.com/index.html

Check them out, they have some cool stuff (and lead too).

 

[the possum]

Another simple solution is to pound the lead into a very thin strip, and then just cut off whatever length you need and wrap it around the line a couple times. It will slide on the line and stop at the hook though, so if you prefer to keep the weights a few inches further up the line it may slip with monofiliment. With regular twisted/braided string it should stay pretty good.

It's been conjectured that they made their own out of bar lead. They carried lead bars from which to cast bullets for their firearms, since it was easier to keep track of than a large quantity of shot in various calibers.

A while back I saw a presentation given by a reenactor who was portraying a member of the Louis & Clark party. (He assumed the role of Drouillard (sp?) I believe) He said rather than carrying separate bars of lead and kegs of powder, they had some cannisters made from big lead pipe. They were designed to hold the same amount of powder needed to shoot all the balls cast from the lead cannister. Pretty cool idea. Though I do believe they also did carry some extra kegs of high grade sporting powder too...

 

[TomFetter]

I know guys who've collected upwards of 5,000 pounds of lead from wheel weights, (had to pay for most of them), made sand-cast moulds, and transformed them into the ballast keels of sailboats.

Melting and casting that much molten lead isn't for the faint hearted, but it sure looks like fun. Usually they've taken old bathtubs, raised them with cinder blocks, and built a bonfire underneath.

 

[SamuraiDave]

When I was out at Vandenberg AFB I got into reloading for my .50 bp rifle my .45, and my Victory .38 S&W.

I have about 75lbs of pure soft lead from pipes and edging from around an old garden an old timer named Jim gave to me, I poured that into my Lee ingot molds and had a bunch of fun.

I also went by the auto hobby shop and collected their wheel weights, the shooting range on base and got some of their recycled lead (they had a little mining operation to recover some of the lead they put downrange). I melted it all (a little bit at a time) in a wally world cast iron pan and made ingots from cast iron cornbread molds.
I am pretty sure I have around 200lbs of lead cornbread. Makes my back hurt just thinking about moving it.

Man... I need to hurry up and start reloading again.

 

[Dave Rishar]

I use lead to cast balls for my muzzleloader, and you can get it from muzzleloading sources. For my purposes, the wheel weights are no good because I need pure soft lead to ram down the barrel. Here's a good place to get lead from:
http://www.turkeyfootllc.com/index.html

Check them out, they have some cool stuff (and lead too).

That's a bit pricey for lead and I can only imagine what the shipping costs. Search your area for a plumber's supply store; some of them still carry pure (or nearly so) lead sheeting.

Check your scrapyards also. Scrap lead around here goes for 40 to 50 cents a pound. A lot of it is garbage with who knows what in it but they always seem to have some of the plumber's sheets laying around.

 

[Svashtar]

For 5 years I saved wheel weights from the tire area of the Chevron I worked at. I brought them home every day in a bag. I have about 100 pounds of cast lead I found in my Dad's garage in 5 lb. ingots, and wanted to add the ww lead as it is hardened with tin. The pure lead is fine for fishing weights but is too soft to reload for bullets as is.

When I moved in a hurry a few years later I couldn't take everything, so reluctantly dumped all the wheel weight lead and just kept the ingots that were in an ammo crate. Wish I had them now. With mag and aluminum rims becoming much more prevalent, tape weights are what is used and the old hammer on weights are becoming scarcer.

Norm

 

[Sylvrfalcn]

:thumbup: Took my homemade hooks, sinkers, and such down to the river this morning and actually caught some dadburn fish with 'em. They weren't nothing to brag about, but would have made a fine meal if I was hungry. Very educational altogether, my next batch of "tackle" will incorporate what I learned this morning about period style fishhooks. Tried several styles, eyed/eyeless, barbed/barbless, big/small, et cetera. They all work, but now I know what works best and how to make 'em better. My fishin' pole was a slender seven foot length of mulberry cut with my trusty piratical EDC (Arrgh matey, there be fish in that river, and Thumbcutter's gonna yank some out and have a look at 'em, arrgh). Good stuff

Sarge

 

[Kevin the grey]

As all my fish take the hook before the bait hits the water I had no idea people used lead weights . Thanks for the tip .L:O:L

 

[Sylvrfalcn]

As all my fish take the hook before the bait hits the water I had no idea people used lead weights . Thanks for the tip .L:O:L

Been out catching flying fish with butterfly nets eh? Here's one that'll tickle your ribs. A buddy of mine when I lived in Miami was a stone cold fishin' junky. One day he got stuck on a Saturday, baby sitting an eight year old boy while his wife and the boy's mom went someplace they were going to be at all day. He figured he could babysit and fish at the same time if he took the boy with him, so he phoned a friend and told him to gas up the boat and get ready to head out.
Now I don't know if you've ever seen a manta ray up close, or seen them when they were jumping out of the water, my first time was in a 14 foot skiff and it scared the beejezus out of me. Anyhow, our intrepid anglers were truckin' across Biscayne Bay, headed to a "good spot", when a big old manta ray leaped from the water on a collision course with the speeding boat. Dayumed thing hit the 8 year old square, knocking him flat on his back and all the wind out of his sails at the same time. Poor kid is belly up on the deck with the big ray covering him like a blanket. Manta rays ain't got teeth or stingers, but the big fellow was frantic and flapping to beat all hell. My buddy and his friend pryed the ray off and pitched it overboard, the kid caught his breath enough to start wailing pitifully, and he pretty much wailed all the way back to my buddy's house. They cleaned the boy up best they could, and made him promise not to tell, but no doubt he still smelled pretty "fishy" when his mom came to get him.
Poor kid, he's a 23 year old man now, but I'd bet a dollar to a donut he still has nightmares about the time he got et by a sea monster.

Sarge