Looking for Useful uses for lead

[Susquatch]

I'm in the same game, but your number needs to be adjusted. Lead melting point is only 621 °F (327 °C) and is a bit higher if mixed with zinc and antimony. At 510 deg C before I learned better, I have watched lead vapours coming out of the pot.

I think @cuslog's numbers are correct. Just like ice melts to become liquid and then boils to become vapour, lead melts at one temp and then vaporizes at a much higher temp.

You still need to worry though. Some lead does end up vapourizing at the same time as it melts because air can hold lead vapour just like it holds water vapour in the form of humidity. No idea what the humidity equivalent is for lead though.

What I do know is that I have no interest in sniffing liquid lead!

 

[Dan Dubeau]

One of my best friends used to be a roofer now turned electrician for the past 10 years. I've come home a few times to a pile of lead flashing sitting in my driveway, and a couple beers probably missing from my beer fridge. I had to tell him to stop, because I just don't go through it fast enough. I turned a bunch of it into ingots years ago, and just haven't gone through enough to both melting the big cap he left me last summer.

Now that he's an electrician, he brings me cast aluminum scrap for casting.

Call around to some roofing, or demolition companies. I'm sure they'd let you take it for free, or a box of timbits or something.

 

[Rob-Ott]

Hi
I think it doesn’t worth the trouble…I’ll explain:

A couple of years ago when bullets prices were through the roof, if you could find them… I was reloading and casting bullets…I heard that I could be contaminating my workspace and got some test kits. When I started to test for lead I saw it was everywhere… clothes, skin, hair… garage walls and so on… I used an special soap to clean it all and test my blood up to a year after stopping to do that.
Unless you want to use a full hazmat suit and have a corner of your house that no children or pet will ever enter I say get rid of it. It does not worth the trouble!

 

[DPittman]

Have you ever read about disposing a compact fluorescent or cleaning up after breaking one? I used to work in the largest lead zinc underground mine in the world, I'm thinking I should be dead a few times over. All I can say is don't believe everything they tell you.
Dan, I'm a sawdust guy myself. When refining silver I used Robin Hood flour. Any wonderful carbon material will consume oxygen.

Ya all this lead poisoning stuff is reminding me of something scary....I knew a boy who long time ago used to put lead pellets in his mouth when he was out hunting with his pellet gun. I guess he didn't know any better and he never really was all that bright of a kid anyhow.

 

[Janger]

Hi
I think it doesn’t worth the trouble…I’ll explain:

A couple of years ago when bullets prices were through the roof, if you could find them… I was reloading and casting bullets…I heard that I could be contaminating my workspace and got some test kits. When I started to test for lead I saw it was everywhere… clothes, skin, hair… garage walls and so on… I used an special soap to clean it all and test my blood up to a year after stopping to do that.
Unless you want to use a full hazmat suit and have a corner of your house that no children or pet will ever enter I say get rid of it. It does not worth the trouble!

Interesting @Rob-Ott and a bit of an eye opener. Would other kinds of casting also coat all nearby surfaces and people with say Aluminium? What about people melting down bismuth, tin, brass, copper? I'm sure breathing in lead vapour is not great would those other metals also vaporize in the air? @Susquatch ?

 

[Tom Kitta]

I got few buckets of lead/zinc wheel weights from a tire shop and was gonna hoard some zinc for brass making and then use some of the lead for Babbitt and few lead hammers.

Besides those uses I was curious if anyone had any other uses a guy could do with lead around the workshop considering I probly have 150lbs of it and talking to the tire shop I got it from they are having a hard time giving the stuff away these days so maybe a guy wants to pour lead statue or line the bedroom walls with it.

Wow, problems giving it away? Here in Alberta I see ads for lead in like $5 per lbs or more range. I have some lead but it is expensive to get. Certainly not in the "give away" territory.

 

[Susquatch]

What about people melting down bismuth, tin, brass, copper? I'm sure breathing in lead vapour is not great would those other metals also vaporize in the air? @Susquatch ?

I didn't mean to scare anybody. But since you asked....

Trace levels of every element can be found in the atmosphere. Most are attributable to meteors and satellites burning up in the atmosphere. But local atmospheric increases often result from melting any metal particularly if overheated to very high temps. Metals in solid form have difficulty sublimating into gases. Its much easier for the liquid (melted) form of metals to give up (vaporize) small quantities into the air. But still not easy at all.

The risk increases significantly with much higher temperatures approaching the vaporization (boiling) temps as @cuslog implied. That's why so much of it comes from asteroids and satellites.

I don't really have any advice other than to use common sense. It's not wise to breathe the fumes from melting any metal. But I'm not inclined to go crazy over it.

My main reason for posting on this at all was to point out that there is a big difference between melting and boiling and to mention that a little vaporization usually accompanies melting either way.

 

[Bandit]

I still like lead for slower bullets, it was in common use for water lines leading to houses in North America until perhaps 1940 or later in some areas.
Easy machining metals often have lead in them, maybe not a good idea pushing that carbide bit up to the blue chip point. (A bit tongue in cheek).
Yes, lead may kill me, (my wife whips out the 45 trapper as I drag another piece home, throwen my hat in just gave her time to load while I waited to see if it came back out!).

 

[Ironman]

These things are as dangerous as the money is available to make them so. Take for instance, Farts, the air we exhale, incandescent lights, plastic straws, mercury vapor lights, guns...I could go on but it's pointless.
The real threat to us is lying politicians.

 

[thestelster]

lying politicians

That statement is superfluous!!

 

[Stuart Samuel]

I've used it to fill brass tube, to support it while bending. Just, uh... don't be an idiot when you're melting the lead out after, make sure the mouth of the tube is nice and clear, not refrozen. Lead expands substantially when heated, and you can, uh, generate an unfortunate amount of pressure. (Happily, no one was injured in the learning of this seemingly obvious lesson)

I've also used it to blend two steel spinnings. I'd read about lead sleds, back in the day, and heard about them from my Dad, who was a car nut in his youth, and decided to try it. You can definitely keep it in a sort of 'slush' range, where you can form it with a paddle, without hitting the melting point and having everything go everywhere. The whole thing was brass plated afterward, looked great.

 

[Stuart Samuel]

(Result, for reference)

 

[JustaDB]

Have a buddy who worked in a tire/muffler shop years ago. He bent an anchor out of muffler pipe, filled it w/ lead melted down from wheel weights, formed a leg shackle & welded a chunk of heavy chain connecting the two.

For years afterwards the anchor managed to show up at every stag party in the country, locked to the leg of the next (usually unwilling) sucker groom to be. It was a PITA, especially when trying to negotiate your way out of a crowded shop or quonset with a full bladder.

 

[Dan Dubeau]

Have a buddy who worked in a tire/muffler shop years ago. He bent an anchor out of muffler pipe, filled it w/ lead melted down from wheel weights, formed a leg shackle & welded a chunk of heavy chain connecting the two.

For years afterwards the anchor managed to show up at every stag party in the country, locked to the leg of the next (usually unwilling) sucker groom to be. It was a PITA, especially when trying to negotiate your way out of a crowded shop or quonset with a full bladder.

Sounds like that's easily avoidable by not getting married.

 

[JustaDB]

Sounds like that's easily avoidable by not getting married.

Yet dozens willingly accepted the challenge, present company included.

 

[mbond]

It is much harder to get to grandchildren without getting married. Some manage it for sure, but the methods are unreliable I think