Recycling Lead

 One of my many hobbies is metal detecting and we find a lot of lead. Lead bullets, lead fishing weights, lead used in plumbing. (The Latin word for lead is "Plumbum", which is where "Plumbing" comes from. The symbol for lead on the Periodic Table is Pb.) Lead has a low melting point, only 621.5 degrees f, which means it can be melted on a simple fire or over hot wood coals. Because of this, lead was used in the old days to make repairs in lots of things. You could melt it and pour it into a cracked pipe to seal it, for example. Thus, lead spills are found on almost every farm.

 

 

 Common sources of lead, for metal detectors, are shown above. At the top are large caliber lead musket balls, each one is about an ounce of lead. In the middle are .22 caliber rimfire bullets, these typically weigh 40 grains (there are 428 grains to the ounce). At the bottom is lead that was spilled onto the ground. I have also found lead pipes, lead toys (they didn't know that lead was toxic back then), lead figurines, and even lead buttons.

 

 Until recently, a good source of used lead, if you needed it, was at the local car repair shop. The weights used to balance a wheel were made from lead. The normal practice was to remove all the weights before rebalancing the wheels and they rarely re-used the ld wheel weights. Yesterday, I picked up over 50 pounds of used wheel weights from a local garage.

 

 Because lead is toxic, many states have banned the use of lead wheel weights (California, Minnesota, Illinois, Maine, New York, Vermont, Washington, New Jersey and Maryland). In those states (and most others) you will find wheel weights made from zinc, steel, or copper alloys. Zinc and steel are the more common forms. Zinc melts at 787 degrees f, so you would need forced air over coals to reach that temperature to melt it for recycling. You are not going to be able to melt the steel weights, but you could fill buckets with them and take them to an iron recycling center.

 Last year, I had more bits of lead than I had space to store it so I decided to melt it down, clean off the dirt/waste materials, and pour the lead into easy to store ingots. To do this, I went to a local antique market and walked through until I found heavy-duty, cast iron ladles, and a cast iron muffin pan. Then all I needed was a hot bed of coals.

 The two ladles I bought worked fine for small batches. This year I bought a much larger one that holds five times as much scrap material.I use the iron rod to stir the melted lead to get the dirt and waste material to float to the top so it can be skimmed off. Lead is very dense so almost any other material in the ladle with float on top of the lead, making it easy to remove.

 Then all you need is a hot bed of coals. I make a fire in my fire pit with hard wood and let it burn down to a deep bed of coals. I then fill the ladle with the scrap lead and place the bowl onto the hot coals. In less that five minutes, the lead melts and sinks to the bottom of the ladle. I use the spoon to skim off the floating waste and dirt and drop that into the can for later disposal. I cannot emphasize enough that lead is toxic. Only do this outdoors when there is a breeze blowing the fumes away from you. Do not spill any lead or the waste material you skim off the melted lead (it is called "dross" and rhymes with "gross") on the ground. If you do, that soil is contaminated and needs to be dug up and disposed of in the trash.

 The ladle and the spoon will get VERY hot. You can use welder's gloves if you have them, to protect your hands. I have a pair of fire fighter's gloves that work great for this task.

 Once you clean the lead, return it to the coals for another minute or two to get hot again. I often times scrape the inside of the ladle to make sure no dirt or foreign material is stuck to the sides. It will float to the top and you can do a final cleaning. Then pour the molten lead CAREFULLY into the muffin pan to the top of each cup. It is a good idea to warm up the muffin pan until it is too hot to touch. This ensures there is no moisture in the cup (pouring molten lead onto moisture will cause a steam explosion) and prevents the pan from cracking due to an extreme temperature change.

 What you end up with is purified lead (probably 90-95% pure) in an easy to stack and store shape. Bars would be better, but I have never seen a bar-shaped cast iron mold though you can purchase bar-shaped ingot molds on the internet. Each one of my lead "muffins" weighs 1/2 pound. I currently have twenty of them safely stored in my basement.

 Now what? That depends on your thoughts about the state of the world I suppose. Lead has many uses for repairs, casting bullets, casting fishing weights, etc. You could sell the lead via online marketplaces. Or, you could hold onto an amount of lead for future bartering.