Made my first lead ingots today

[Sanderhawk]

I have been wanting to try this for awhile. I finally got enough old wheel weights together to make a go of it. The best part was I didn`t have to buy anything had stuff in the garage and one of the wifes muffin pan she doesn`t know is missing yet. I fired up my old coleman camping stove and got out a small steel pan and started the process. I did it outside my garage because at first it was smoking enough I didn`t want the neighbors to think the garage was on fire. The lead started to melt pretty quick, quicker than I thought it would. There was enough to make 5 1/2 ingots not bad since I didn`t know how much lead I needed in the first place. After I do this once or twice more I want to take a crack at making shot to reload my 12ga. shells. I was looking into what I need for that so I think it will be abit before I get into that. I figure if I can make the shot it will cost next to nothing to reload. Anyway heres a pic of my first production

[bohoki]

gooble gobble, gooble gobble, one of us

[Sanderhawk]

Holy Crap I have some catching up to do thats alot of lead right there.

[bruceflinch]

Holy Crap I have some catching up to do thats alot of lead right there.

Bohoki's are prettier. You didn't use Crisco did you Sanderhawk?

[bumpo628]

From the bubbles on the ingots, it looks like you're using a teflon coated muffin pan.
It will eventually go away and it won't harm the lead.
Next time, throw the pan on the bbq for 20 minutes (before you use it for lead of course) and the coating will burn right off.
Or, hit it with a torch in a well ventilated area and burn it off right now.

[Mike A]

Making birdshot at home is pretty hard to do. BUCKSHOT is easy; just requires the right diameter round ball moulds. I use wheelweights for rifle bullets (mainly in various .308-bored rifles: .308, .30-30, and .30-40, also in my .25-35. But I've been finding non-lead wheelweights here in CA; wonder when we are going to run out of lead ones?

I also salvage "range scrap": fired bullets and bullet cores, to get lead. Since all of my supply is hardened (alloy, not pure) lead all of my cast bullets are fairly hard. That works great in the rifles I shoot, but someday I'm gonna have to actually PAY MONEY (Ugh, horrible thought) for some pure lead to add into the mix.....

[BigBronco]

So, are those Teflon coated cop killer ingots?

[762cavalier]

So, are those Teflon coated cop killer ingots?

I would imagine that if you could lob those at 1000+ ft per second they would pretty much kill anything.

[Sanderhawk]

From the bubbles on the ingots, it looks like you're using a teflon coated muffin pan.
It will eventually go away and it won't harm the lead.
Next time, throw the pan on the bbq for 20 minutes (before you use it for lead of course) and the coating will burn right off.
Or, hit it with a torch in a well ventilated area and burn it off right now.

I was wondering why there were bubbles in the ingots. I finished to day and I have a total of 16 ingots but the rest of them have bubbles also

Making birdshot at home is pretty hard to do. BUCKSHOT is easy; just requires the right diameter round ball moulds. I use wheelweights for rifle bullets (mainly in various .308-bored rifles: .308, .30-30, and .30-40, also in my .25-35. But I've been finding non-lead wheelweights here in CA; wonder when we are going to run out of lead ones?

I`m thinking I may get some buckshot molds and give it a try.

Today at the tire shop the tech told me they don`t make lead wheel weights anymore they have switched to steel or zinc.