Bullet Lead Pricing

[LynnJr]

I have 6000 pounds of spent bullets I am making into ingots.
The original plan was to make 40 ounce salmon sinkers but they closed the season.
Do casters prefer used bullet lead? Or does it matter?
Also how much a pound is it worth before I wear out my back casting ingots?

[sghart]

Range lead is typically softer, usually in the 9-10 BHN range. Some casters don't like such a soft alloy preferring to add in other metals to achieve their desired hardness. Personally I love range scrap as it fits my needs perfectly.

As far as value the way things are right now I would think you could get $1.50 per pound for ingots of range lead, perhaps more. But you may get a good price just for the recovered bullets without going through all of the work of smelting, fluxing and pouring 6000 lbs of lead.

Have you looked into the Cast Boolits forum? If not they would be the guys to give you an answer. I have been a member over there for a long time and I have learned a lot about cast bullets.

https://castboolits.gunloads.com/forum.php

[bigbossman]

...... you may get a good price just for the recovered bullets without going through all of the work of smelting, fluxing and pouring 6000 lbs of lead.

If I had 6,000lbs of scrap lead, that's the route I'd take. Sell it for a bit less and let the hobbyist do the work. Smelting, fluxing and pouring 6000 lbs of lead would not be worth the time and effort.

[edgerly779]

If it has jackets mixed in then smelt it and sell copper separately.

[Cowboy T]

I did 1,000 lb of used bullets some years back. Ended up getting about 750 lb of lead out of it and sold the copper to the local metal recycler. It really wasn't that hard, much like melting down wheel weights. BHN was about 11-12. Works *great* in every handgun application I've ever tried, up to and including full-house .357 Magnum and .44 Magnum loads. Casters do like lead alloy from used bullets; I sure do.

The only time I would consider using something harder is for .454 Casull. For that, my max BHN is 15-16.

[pacrat]

sghart said;

But you may get a good price just for the recovered bullets without going through all of the work of smelting, fluxing and pouring 6000 lbs of lead.

Well worth considering. ^^^

With a 20 pound pot, that's 300 batches.

Even with a 50 pound pot, that's still 120 batches.

[TomReloaded]

Lead ingots are $2.29-$4.00 a pound right now. That's a ton of work, but you got yourself a pretty valuable amount of lead.

70lb fits in a $18 shipped USPS box, just selling as-is isn't a bad idea either.