Odd but Possible Viable Lead Source?

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txaggie929

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May 11, 2015
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Texas, United States
Been out of shooting for a few years, and now getting back into it, and not sure why I never thought to ask this......

I own a roofing company here in Texas. Alot of homes that we re-roof have lead pipe boots / lead pipe jacks (whatever you want to call them) that we replace. Sometimes they're painted to match the roof, but sometimes not.

Anyone know if these would be a viable source of lead if I were to ever considering swaging my own slugs?
 
Bedrock Bob said:
Yes. That's usually pretty pure lead.

Hardness makes a lot of difference. Whatever you use it would be best to know how hard the lead is before deciding to use for a projectile.
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I know next to nothing about lead types or hardness. How is that determined? This lead is somewhat hard, but still malleable as you can bend it with your hands.
 
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txaggie929 said:
I know next to nothing about lead types or hardness. How is that determined? This lead is somewhat hard, but still malleable as you can bend it with your hands.
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There is a lot of discussion on the forum about it. It's a process. You stamp a steel ball into it and measure the diameter of the dent.

There are lots of redneck ways to determine the hardness of lead. Lots of info out there as well. I hate to say "Google it". But Google it.

I used to have a series of lead "pencils" to test it. They were "Lyman" or "Herters" back in the day. Im sure there is something like that available. We cast a lot of lead bullets and swaged cores for jacketed bullets. That was many moons ago.
 
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Bedrock Bob said:
There is a lot of discussion on the forum about it. It's a process. You stamp a steel ball into it and measure the diameter of the dent.

There are lots of redneck ways to determine the hardness of lead. Lots of info out there as well. I hate to say "Google it". But Google it.

I used to have a series of lead "pencils" to test it. They were "Lyman" or "Herters" back in the day. Im sure there is something like that available. We cast a lot of lead bullets and swaged cores for jacketed bullets. That was many moons ago.
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Sounds like it's Google time for me lol
 
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All the lead vent pipe boots I've ever seen were soft lead. If it were me, I'd save it, scrap it, and run like hell to buy me a new gun lol. The process of making slugs out of scrap lead like that is to time consuming, for myself I'd rather just buy the finish product. But don't forget your going to spend a lot of money & time figuring out what your gun likes, different weights, brand, ect. Besides being a good tuner some people never do.
 
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txaggie929 said:
Been out of shooting for a few years, and now getting back into it, and not sure why I never thought to ask this......

I own a roofing company here in Texas. Alot of homes that we re-roof have lead pipe boots / lead pipe jacks (whatever you want to call them) that we replace. Sometimes they're painted to match the roof, but sometimes not.

Anyone know if these would be a viable source of lead if I were to ever considering swaging my own slugs?
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@txaggie929 Use it. I know a man in the roofing industry who collected those boots to melt and cast for firearms. I do not know the purity. You may be able to check with folks at ABC or Beacon, they should be able to tell you or give you some sort of idea on how pure it is. I know those boots are extremely soft and malleable.
 
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Ta-Ta Toothie said:
Agree with the above about scraping, but would instead use the money to buy clean lead wire from NSA.
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100%. True

A source for pure lead wire extruded to an exact dimension is the only practical way to swage any projectile. Trying to swage home made castings without any experience using scrap lead is a recipe for crappy bullets and broken punches.
 
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If it’s soft it’s probably sufficiently pure but you’ll still need to reshape it into blanks to swage into the final slugs. The best form of blank is cut lead wire. Research what it would take to melt that scrap and make lead wire and I’ll bet between time and money invested, you’re better off scrapping it and buying wire from NSA. NSAs price per pound is very competitive and it’s very clean pure stuff.
 
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my local scrap metal dealer has quite a supply of old x ray room sheets as well as roof flashing. it's filthy and I "render" it in big lots and pour it into ingots.I don't swage but mix it with other alloys containing tin and it's quite useful to cast bullets with .Locally it's $1 per pound.
 
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I won't comment on if it's good for slugs or not but, I used to save all the lead drain pipe, toilet lead elbows that tied into the 4 inch cast pipe and lead roof flanges for my dad to make fishing weight sinkers. A lot of dirty slag had to be skimmed off but the finish product was excellent.
 
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txaggie929 said:
I know next to nothing about lead types or hardness. How is that determined? This lead is somewhat hard, but still malleable as you can bend it with your hands.
Click to expand...
@txaggie929 You can send lead samples for hardness testing. For example, Corbin Manufacturing makes dies and presses has advertised that they will test lead hardness for customers. There are also lead hardness testers that can be purchased. I’m not sure how accurate they are.
 
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WoodWelder said:
I won't comment on if it's good for slugs or not but, I used to save all the lead drain pipe, toilet lead elbows that tied into the 4 inch cast pipe and lead roof flanges for my dad to make fishing weight sinkers. A lot of dirty slag had to be skimmed off but the finish product was excellent.
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Jigheads bro. The pellets of the sea.
 
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Roofing lead is pure or almost pure lead. You can determine the hardness of a piece of lead by using a set of drawing pencils meant for artists that have a numerical value stamped on them. That number is an indicator of the hardness of that particular pencil lead. If you want to dive into this, lookup the threads on castboolits.com (yes that is how it's spelled). Lots of good info over there on these types of subjects.

 
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