What should I expect to pay for lead?

[WillaminaOR]

Any casters out there? What's a fair price for lead? Fair price for wheel weights?

I got some for free, went into another tire shop and he said $1/lb. Free of course seems great, $1/lb seems kind of high.

Thanks,
Bryan

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[Certaindeaf]

Well if you got some for free and then some for $1/lb, you got them both for .50/lb. lol
A buck for dirty WW's seems high.. there's labor and loss (junk) involved.
You should be able to get pure or WW's in clean ingots for around a $1/lb.
I think I started a thread a ways back here on where (Portland area) to get clean pure for a buck.
Craigslist is actually a pretty good place for lead though.. it being a commodity and all.
Good luck.

 

[HappyRoman]

I have some available for $1 in clean ingots

 

[Certaindeaf]

Roman is right on the money.
If you called around to the scrap yards for WW's, they'd likely be .70-.85/lb and then there's a lot of labor and loss. Spot price on Kitco is around .87 now and has been roughly $1 for quite a while.. so $1 is pretty much the going rate for good ingots. Which is maddening when you point this out to the scrappers when they are selling you filthy pails of crud that need smelting.. along with the associated perhaps 30% loss to clips and other junk. anyway

 

[Benchrest]

I have some available for $1 in clean ingots

I'm interested

BHN?

And no PMs?

 

[IronMonster]

$1/lb for pure refined lead would be a reasonably good deal. $1/lb for tire weights not a good deal.

 

[Jerry]

I have a regular size coffee can full of lead foil from dental x-ray film. I don't know what it weighs, but it's damn heavy. I reckon that it is pure lead and not alloyed.

Any idea what it's worth per pound?

Would it work for someone casting their own bullets?

 

[Trailboss]

I have a regular size coffee can full of lead foil from dental x-ray film. I don't know what it weighs, but it's damn heavy. I reckon that it is pure lead and not alloyed.

Any idea what it's worth per pound?

Would it work for someone casting their own bullets?

Jerry,

Anytime I melt small pieces to make one pound ingots, I loose some weight to dross. If the foil is clean, it should yield approx 90% of its starting weight in ingots. That should put the value at 80-90 cents per pound.

It would work well for soft bullets.

Tb

 

[Trailboss]

$1/lb for pure refined lead would be a reasonably good deal. $1/lb for tire weights not a good deal.

Agree IM, I would pay 1$/lb for tire weight led ingots however. They shoot pretty well.

 

[Jerry]

Agree IM, I would pay 1$/lb for tire weight led ingots however. They shoot pretty well.

You can't gt lead wheel weights anymore in WA. Damned Dept of Ecology got them banned 'cause they can fall off and leach into a ditch that goes to a creek that goes to a river that goes to the ocean.......OH MY GOD! LEAD!!! I think the sky just fell!

 

[Trailboss]

You can't gt lead wheel weights anymore in WA. Damned Dept of Ecology got them banned 'cause they can fall off and leach into a ditch that goes to a creek that goes to a river that goes to the ocean.......OH MY GOD! LEAD!!! I think the sky just fell!

It's too bad we can't eat eco-nuts. There seems to be an endless supply and it would eliminate all hunger in the world.

 

[U201491]

It's too bad we can't eat eco-nuts. There seems to be an endless supply and it would eliminate all hunger in the world.

You can but the taste is ugly..............

 

[eliduc]

Any casters out there? What's a fair price for lead? Fair price for wheel weights?

I got some for free, went into another tire shop and he said $1/lb. Free of course seems great, $1/lb seems kind of high.

Thanks,
Bryan

I pay $40 for a 5 gallon bucket of wheel weights from a local tire shop. It takes two guys to carry it to my car. I get about 90 lbs of cast ingots out of the bucket.

 

[Robin a Kaseno]

You can't gt lead wheel weights anymore in WA. Damned Dept of Ecology got them banned 'cause they can fall off and leach into a ditch that goes to a creek that goes to a river that goes to the ocean.......OH MY GOD! LEAD!!! I think the sky just fell!

This I did not know. Very interesting, thanks.

 

[eliduc]

Any casters out there? What's a fair price for lead? Fair price for wheel weights?

I got some for free, went into another tire shop and he said $1/lb. Free of course seems great, $1/lb seems kind of high.

Thanks,
Bryan

Wheel weights straight from a tire shop have a lot of other junk mixed in with them. Steel clips, valve stems, cigarette butts, zinc. I was buying 150 lb buckets and getting about 90 lbs of lead for $50. Then another shop started selling me the same five gal. buckets for $25. I can cast almost 4000 158 grain 38/357 bullets from 100 lbs of lead. I drop my bullets from the mold into a bucket of water. I have never had a leading problem shooting moderate loads. Lead wheel weights have pretty decent hardness when water cooled. A dollar a pound for straight lead weights isn't bad. If they are still mixed it's not a great price. I started out casting the lead into ingots. Now I just separate the junk from my pot as I am casting bullets. I do this for two reasons. Why melt it twice? Buckets full weights are less likely to be stolen than buckets full of ingots.

Any casters out there? What's a fair price for lead? Fair price for wheel weights?

I got some for free, went into another tire shop and he said $1/lb. Free of course seems great, $1/lb seems kind of high.

Thanks,
Bryan

Any casters out there? What's a fair price for lead? Fair price for wheel weights?

I got some for free, went into another tire shop and he said $1/lb. Free of course seems great, $1/lb seems kind of high.

Thanks,
Bryan