Can diving weights be used to cast bullets ?

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Ballistic Therapy
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Can diving weights be used to cast bullets ?

#1

Post by Ballistic Therapy »

A friend of mine has about 200 pounds of lead weights that were used for diving belts.

Can they be melted into bullets or are they not good because they are mixed with other metals ?
Thy are marked KING NEPTUNE and then the number of pounds that each one weighs.

So any bullet casters out there that would know ?


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Re: Can diving weights be used to cast bullets ?

#2

Post by Suck My Glock »

In trying to answer that question, a quick Goggle search of King Neptune Lead came up with an article about the guy who ran it being shut down by the government in 1992 for polluting his shop and neighborhood with not only toxic lead byproducts, but RADIOACTIVITY from using scrap lead from the nuclear energy industry.

So if you know anyone who has some Geiger-counters, you may want to test if yours is "hot".

Also, back when King Neptune was smelting, independent operators like him often used scrap car batteries. The problem with that is that due to the acid mixes those lead plates are soaked in, smelting them releases toxic gasses you don't want any part of. If these weights were made from that, and depending on the temp they were last melted, there could still be some of that toxicity in there waiting to be let loose once smelted again if you do it at too hot a temperature. This is one of the reasons why car batteries are no longer recycled here in the U.S. and they're all sent to Mexico, China or India, smelted down, then the raw lead sent back. (Which is why so much bullet production is now based in Lewiston, Idaho, the nation's farthest inland port, where a lot of the lead gets offloaded.)
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Re: Can diving weights be used to cast bullets ?

#3

Post by knockonit »

certainly can, but may need to alloy it, and i've used the lead containers meds have used for the nuc stuff.

the best brinell hardness we found for boolits is around 16, and if unsure of actual bullet size, slug the barrel. pretty easy to alloy lead, quite a few formulas on the webs, and usually the others animony, and tin are available. good luck, nothing like pouring a few thousand boolits to size and lube
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Re: Can diving weights be used to cast bullets ?

#4

Post by Ballistic Therapy »

I'm not going to do anything with it.
He was just wondering if it was worth anything to anyone else.
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Re: Can diving weights be used to cast bullets ?

#5

Post by knockonit »

lead can be hard to find, and is only gonna get harder as they shut down the only lead mine in USA a few years ago, do have to watch wheel weights, as some of them are ugly and will screw up a batch of lead,
same with any lead thats been around for less than say 10 years or so. one just has to be careful, i have probably a half ton of divers weight that was poured into ingots for future pours.
leads been going for anywhere from 1 to 2 dugats a pound. pending volumne,
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Re: Can diving weights be used to cast bullets ?

#6

Post by BigNate »

I am sure that it "CAN" be used - how good will it be? Who knows. I can tell you that I found about 100lbs of diving weights at a garage sale a while back and picked them up for pennies. They are now sitting in a box in the back corner of the shed at our SHTF bug-out spot... Figured it doesn't cost anything to sit there - and that if the time came that I needed to fill molds for 405gr lead bullets I'd have a place to start.
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Re: Can diving weights be used to cast bullets ?

#7

Post by WyattBurp »

Yes it can, how you proceed is what you are shooting. Black powder is preferred for regular soft lead, anything that is not sub sonic should be hard cast. Its pretty easy adding elements to the soft lead to make hard cast. I would advertise it on CL, Offerup or here. He should probably get 2 ducks a pound or give it to me:)
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