I think most fishing sinkers are pure lead. That's too soft for most cast bullets unless you are making round balls or conical bullets for muzzle loaders or cap and ball revolvers. Most lead bullets for cartridge firearms are an alloy of lead, tin and antimony similar to this:

http://www.rotometals.com/product-p/HardballBulletCastingAlloy.htm?gclid=CKft...

I hope you're right about lead becoming a "precious metal" someday. I have many pounds of the stuff my (deceased) Father-in-Law salvaged from a torn-down X-ray room at a hospital he helped demolish. Back in Ohio, we were avid flintlock shooters and competed regularly, casting our own balls and Minie bullets. I gave it up years ago, when traditional black powder became classified as a "low explosive" and required an ATF license to purchase. I still load .410 shells with Jim Shockey Gold, but I buy the shot from Cabela's in 25 pound bags (a bag lasts me forever!)

Right you are, Shorty!
At a local shooting club, they have on display a 9mm auto pistol that "blew up" b/c the shooter cast his own bullets using pure lead, no jacket. The soft metal filled the rifling and scrubbed off in the barrel until the slide locking mechanism couldn't handle the back pressure anymore, failed and sent a ball of fire and the slide back into the face of the shooter. He wasn't seriously injured, but a good lesson was learned.

Pretty cool that you found that. Lead sinkers around here are gettign pretty scarce, mostly its Bithmus (sp).  

But hey, at nearly $5 per 16... I would say theres a definate increase in price for lead right there! I paid $75 for ~ 170 pounds.  So I have double my money!

Dave wrote on 04/14/14 at 09:22:41:


The club I belong to does almost exactly that. Every few years they hire a company that brings in a machine that tills up a few inches of the ground out past all the trap and skeet fields where the shot falls. They scoop up the dirt,dump it into another machine that separates the lead from the soil. They pay the club for the lead they reclaim.

I don't think they have ever tried mining the berms at the pistol and rifle ranges, but I wouldn't be surprised if there was a way to do that too, and make some money.

Y'know, sometimes I think the health hazards from things like lead and BPA in plastic is really overblown. Granted, these things are toxic, and have been proven to be hazardous, but how much exposure are we risking and how much is too much? Washington outlawed lead wheel weights about a year ago, because some wizard submitted a "study" indicating that expelled wheel weights were poisoning salmon streams and habitat. Sorry, but I have been running along roads and highways here since 1992, and I have seen NUMEROUS aluminum cans and other trash, but barely a handful of expelled wheel weights.

Pine wrote on 04/14/14 at 14:10:13:


They're starting to have "no burn" days here.  We certainly can see the difference in air quality during the wildfires.

Maybe in the future we'll have "no drive" days.