As a scuba diver I find lead underwater all the time. From lead sinkers to other divers losing their weight belts. I also cut out the lead from sail boat keels that are sunken. It’s an endless supply of the stuff for me here on the east coast. The dive boat captains hate it when I bring up a couple hundred pounds of lead up but I make sure to make it worth their while.

We used to melt lead from our tooth paste tubes to make fishing sinkers. I know I am dating myself but a lot of people do not know about the lead tooth paste tubes. I have made it to 76 and still kicking..

I had to laugh..."It don't matter what you tell 'em, just get their lead" Yup. That's how you do it! You can also tell them that you make fishing jigs or lures with it.

EA - You've got it all covered except for radiation shielding and containers for radioisotopes (those would be dangerous if there was any left over radioisotopes on the lead though). Just think - we used lead in our water pipes all the way into the 60s, and we can still find lead water pipes in scrap yards today...plumbers used to keep melted lead going all the time in their shops. Lead was everywhere - in water pipes, gasoline, roofs, printing industry, paint, glass, cosmetics, pewter, electronics, solder. Amazing that people weren't dropping dead everywhere, plus the following generations all adversely affected to include us today. And we used asbestos in our kitchens, ceilings, insulation, even firefighter suits, welding. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to ya, FC Steve

When I was a child in the late 40's and early 50's, I think the tooth paste tubes were lead.

I love this guys intro. Such a happy sounding “hey, hey guys”

I retired from the phone company which used to have cables that had an outer sheath made of lead. The splices were wrapped with a lead sleeve that ranged from 20 inch diameter down to 1 inch tubes. It was customarily found in manholes as well as cable splices in older building and near the telephone poles . So some cable and construction yards will still have a LEAD scrap bin next to the copper recycle bins. J K

“It don’t matter what you tell em, just get some Lead” 😂😂🤙🏽

Hey Elvis, pewter is between 85 to 99% tin with maybe 2% copper. I use it as tin and add about 2 percent pewter(couple of ounces by eye) to my 20lb melting pot when casting bullets to make the lead fill out the moulds better. It will only add about 1 BHN to your cast bullets. More than 2% tin is overkill. Genuine pewter must have the word "PEWTER" stamped on the bottom. I find pewter pieces at thrift shops and Goodwill stores. Happy casting. Keep your powder dry.

One source I came across today and that I haven't seen anyone talk about is windows! If you ever see a silvery metal in between panes of glass in windows, chances are it's pure lead. Just like in stained glass windows! Keep your eyes open!

Coming from jersey, I stick with the fishing sinker excuse.

I got 200 lbs of that roofing lead from my days of doing roofing in high school, im glad i didnt let my dad throw it away lol

Old cast nets used to catch bait for fishing have lead weights around the bottom of them.

I did some research on those "renewable fuse links". It seems that they can be made from several types of metal. I did not see lead or tin listed in any of the types of metal. The closest thing I found was Zinc. Copper and silver plated copper are fairly common materials for them also. I would test the melting points of them to see what you have there.

Im headed to pickup 300lbs of roofing lead. Wheel weights are hard to come by around here. Thanks for the tip Elvis.

A box of beer goes a long way for some scrap lead

Let's not forget other sources, Lead foil in dental X-rays, radiological sample containers, X-ray equipment, old TV crt tubes, shielding from the walls of an x-ray room in a hospital, terminal posts on lead-acid car batteries( yes yes I know there's some inside the battery too but it's an awful lot of hassle) also don't forget semi trucks have some very large wheel weights. Also Babbitt bearings and old lead hammers, printers linotype, and even shooting range scrap

if you bent tin, it wil make a cracking sound, you can make with tin and pure lead fine bullets 1 tin 10 lead

So if your near the coast, go down to jetties, revetments with rocks, boat ramps, you will find an old torn up cast net. lots of lead there.

I'm looking for lead to melt into scuba weights! Lol

Sir you are a true scrouger. I have the guy at the range convinced that I make fishing lures and sinkers. I even use a old business card from back in the day when I used to make them. Most ranges won't sell it to you in f they know you are casting bullets. They want you to buy thier ammunition.

Those are TIN anodes...... Used for the process of plating,electrical parts.

the long pieces that crackles when you bend it is pure tin for sure

For many years Chrysler made cars that had tilt steering wheels had a lead weight weighing several pounds under the horn button so the steering wheel would drop easier. Also Ford Crown Victoria's amd simular Mercurys had a tin can on the tailshaft of the transmissions full of lead shot. I worked in a wrecking yard for 32 years and saved several hundred pounds of lead over the years.

Love your videos man! You are the reason I started casting! No idea on the shawmut fuse maybe lead/tin. The Monarch ones are probably an aluminum alloy but cant be 100% sure without putting hands on it. Appreciate ya man keep up the great work!

PURE TIN- WHEN YOU BEND IT, IT WILL MAKE SNAP AND CRACKEL NOISES.

All fuse clips are made of high conductivity tin-plated copper. Is info I got off of web hope this helps 😉

Your videos helped me get into casting. Another source would be indoor shooting ranges. Those traps fill up and the range generally has to pay to have it removed. If you can talk them into it, you can get a lot of lead and possibly save them money.

From looking on the internet those Shawmut fuse links are die cut zinc.

Tin is easy to test. It melts at 450 degrees. You can hold a butane lighter under it and it will melt pretty quick. Tin is also a little less bendy. It cracks easier when you bend it.

Many years ago, powder manufacturers packed the powder in lead containers. How convenient!

Thanks Don Elvis!! Good info! Saludos

The fuses are zinc more or less you can be lucky to find silver fuses.

Elvis, all good info buddy, another good source, if they will sell it to you is Ship Yards that are in the ship breaking business. ships use hundreds of pounds or tons of Lead for ballast all cut into blocks at about 25-50-100-150 pounds apiece. depending on the HasMat control in the state regulations they may be able to sell it to privet individuals. It's worth looking into. Valeo California was the Home of Mar Island Submarine Base, It closed back in the early 90's, anyway a privet contractor is using the facility now as a breaking yard. Dave.

roofers usually deal with lead when putting on a new ,like the lead flashing around chimneys and its most pure lead as is can be rolled up its so soft

Yes people in California will role over in there graves thing there was lead on there bottles Very interesting video keep them up sir keep them up

I think those straps are labeled 1" denoting the depth of the hardware hole or some other feature of the strap that would be 1 inch.

Excellent tips

OK Elvis Heres the deal on pewter. Used to be that pewter was 92% tin 6-7 %lead The rest was copper or antimony. Then people figured out that lead wasn't good for you so the manufacturers found a way to make lead free pewter. It is now required by law for making pewter eating and drinking utensils. You can tell by looking at it if it has lead in it. The old stuff looks blue. The new lead free stuff has that silver look too it. The new pewter is 98% tin the other 2% may be silver. Dont know for sure. Secret formula i suppose. Makes good bullets though. I buy pewter mugs at the Goodwill store on half price day. Mugs weigh about 8 ounces. I get them for about one too two dollars each. I usually add one mug to ten pounds of wheel weights. John Davis jax fl

Being a pool man on the left coast, I get some from pool vacuum heads. There’s zinc in there too.

Tin makes a creaking sound when bent. It melts 170 degrees F before lead, and only weighs 1/4th what lead weighs.

I worked for Bell Canada an I got all my lead off old cable sheaths during scraping runs ..

It dont matter what you tell them, just take their lead! 🤣🤣

Excellent. Book Marked this to share with my FB BP Pards. One more thing to add, as you are doing I presume. Do not mix the differeni kinds of lead you find or you will end up with a hodge podge of some allow and have to spend a lot of of time figuring out how hard it is. Bullets for a modern gun like an alloy that is so and so Lee hard. A front stuffer want that pure lead . Solder joints are 50% tin. The "tin" bars may be some part of a heating coil and are tin. The fuses may be zinc. Isotope shields for medical use are safe as the isotopes are short lived but they are scrap lead and very hard. That plumbers trap is also a harder lead so don't mix it with the pipes, less and solder joints. Once everything is cleaned once, test each one separately and grade them as far as hardness. I use my hands and ears to do this. Hard lead bar ingots ring if they are hard and "thud" when dropped on a concrete floor. The higher the tone you hear, the harder the alloy. Soft ingots are easy to bend. Oh! And lead shot is pure lead. Gun clubs will sell reclaimed mixed shot if you ask them to sell it to you. The rifle range will yield ~ Lee #2 lead.

Back in the day there were lead shower pans

Good information

Tin is usually marked SN They, those bars, look like anodes that are used in zinc plating. They cake up with salts and must be replaced from time to time.

I really like roofing lead. The roofing lesd I have is the softest, purest lead I've found, its wonderful for slugs and cap and ball revolvers. I've prchased lead on ebay that promised bhn 5 that was way too hard for my revolvers but the roofing lead was the best I have enough for several years of blach powder shooting, and enough monotype for a few years. I think lead type is going to dry up in a few years, then wheel weights will, then tin will need to be purchased. In my state lead wheel weights are not to be had because the state outlawed them several years ago. The type is because newspapers don't use that sort of printing anymore for the most part; that kind of printing equipment is antique.

I sure do wish I'd kept the lead drain pipes that I ripped out of my house, but I didn't start casting until over 10 years later. I'm annealing that brass you sent me as I type this.

Elvis. Modern Pewter is about 94% tin with a trace of copper and the rest antimony. I melt my foodware separate from my candle holders since the foodware in the last 100 years doesn't contain lead. (In case I want to sell lead free pewter to offset my costs).

I think the things with tin written on end of one, maybe straps to hold gas tanks on a car or truck.

Tin pr zinc is my guess on the fuses. High pitch sound rules out lead.

The tin anode strip you have looks like the type used in the past to plate copper bus bars/wire etc with Sn. I have a lot of 99.99 Sn and, when bent, makes the same crystal twinning sound that yours did, ie deep crunches as opposed to the high pitched crackling that most pewter (less tin(Sn) makes. Its unlikely, but if you're browsing in a scrapyard: keep an eye out for indium. It has the same bright silver color of tin, crackles like it as well but is even softer than lead with an even lower melting temperature than either.

Ya as i have scrounge for lead for making salmon cannon ball sinkers ive ran into alot of that tin/lead stuff which can be a pain to melt sometimes and is always dirty

Great video

I had a source for that roofing lead . It was great for making slugs .

I have unlimited access to my pistol range backstop. a few minutes digging and I have a kilo that I borrow, re-cast and then throw back into the backstop.

They are "fusible links". They fit inside of the cartridge style fuses. Instead of discarding the whole fuse, one would only need to replace the blown link with one of the same rating.

The days of the old FUDD type bullet casters is pretty much over. Beggars can't be choosy these days and you use whatever you can find at the time for a reasonable price making it work. Nowadays with powder coating the actual lead alloy and BHN are less important than they were in the past. You can shoot stuff now after powder coating that would have been unusable in the past because it was too soft or not "chemistry correct" PERFECT Lyman #2, Hardball, 50/50 Linotype etc etc etc. In fact you can use range scrap straight up with powder coating most of the time for a great number of handgun calibers as long as you water quench. Prices are up and through the roof in Fall 2022. Hunt down and buy what you can get when you can get it. The days of the local tire shops GIVING you a 5 gallon bucket of good usable lead wheel weights for free or for trading a case of beer, pack of smokes, box of doughnuts is also VERY OVER! If you are lucky they will SELL them to you for about $1 per pound...if you aren't lucky they will sell them for $2+ per pound or not at all. With that in mind make friends with your local scrapyard. I've personally known my guys for over 20 years and they always tip me off when good stuff comes in. I make a phone call to ask what they have that is lead at that given time. These guys are also gun guys so they know what I am using it for and no "Anti-2A Politics" come into play ever.

How much would you sell the roofing lead need it for fishing net

Jim is correct... Round ones used to be used in cathodic protection for pipelines by passing a small electrical current through 2 of these... 2 from tin and the grong connected to a pipeline... Tin will rust and lead will turn white in the weather...

Sash and case Windows , usually big counter weights on them

I think that said TIN, and that it indicates tin content, in the lead. That's good for bullets. Pure lead is fine for round powder balls. Cartridge, smokeless powder bullets need to have copper, aluminium, and tin content in order to not deform, when shot.

Old typewriter keys are a good source of antimony

The metal on the inside of a fuse is zinc Cooper aluminum all of this kind of alloys

I came here to find sources of lead for when SHTF so I can make fishing weights and jig heads 🤣 I don’t think casting bullets is legal in my area but I haven’t checked.

The 250v 150a fuse looks like a locomotive fuse

Hey elvis: In the video showing all the places where someone can find lead for bullet casting. And you askes the question if the material in question that you were holding was tin. Upon further examination of the video. The material in question is tin. So the answer to your question is that piece of material is tin the answer is yes absolutely!!!

I stopped at a scrap yard/recycling center about a block from me and asked them if they had any pure lead (for muzzleloaders), The guy said he had about 5000 pounds of it, but it was getting scarce.

Hey Elvis, If I'm not mistaken, I remember hearing you say you're located in upstate SC in one of your vidoes? I'm up around the Greenville area and just got a huge score on wheel weights. Haven't even been able to weigh it yet, but it's well over 200 pounds, and most of it is lead. What would you say you've had your best luck with here in the upstate?

The things you’re asking about around 5:50 mark appear to bridge anchor clips used to secure railroad ties to the structure

I'm making splitshots for fishing , heavy, emphasis on shots

Good thing for hardening pure soft lead is white babbit. Has all the goods we need for hard alloy and it goes a long way. 1 pound should do about 100 lbs of pure lead. Last I bought was about $7.00 a pound after tax.

At 14:10 those are fuse elements...……….they slide in a ceramic cartridge with screw on ends.

They are replacement fuses that go inside of a fuse yes they lead

Antimony hardens. Tin softens.

you can know if it is lead by taking a screwdriver and pressing it on the metal and pulling it if it has left a dent and if it has passed easily it is lead

Tin or indium Does it make that crackle sound when bent or stressed?

I recognize the counterweight it came out of a window a rope was attached to it it went up to the top of the window with a pulley on it hold your window open in a antique house

Wheel weights are now made from steel or zinc. Finding lead wheel weights is getting difficult. I was given a 4 foot by 8 foot door off of an x-ray room. No worries. It is safe. There was 1000lbs of lead in the door. The x-ray room was remodeled with new sheetrock and paint. The guy I got the door from said the shielding in the walls were 4 inch by 6 inch blocks 3 inches thick stacked up floor to ceiling.

Question: What is your method for cutting the large pieces of scrap lead into smaller pieces that are more easily melted in your Lee pot? Also, thanks for your contribution to educating folks like me. You’re hilarious and informative at the same time. Love it!

The best excuse for needing lead is for casting fishing sinkers

It should be fairly easy to distinguish between tin and lead by comparing the density. The specific gravity of tin is 7.2 to 7.5. Lead is almost twice as dense. Its specific gravity is 11.34. As you probably already know, a little dab of tin melted into your lead will soften it up significantly.

The candle holder and cup might be pewter which is 95% tin, soft and melt like lead but worth tripe than copper. I melt pewter into small ingot and sell on eBay as pewter scrap. Do not mix.

Okay, endless supply of lead exist at your gun range. Anywhere anybody shoots into a berm you can extract the spent Bullets. There you go you are welcome. The coolest thing about it is the copper jacket that separates from the lead and that can be sold for copper prices. About an hour of digging and sifting can yield thirty pounds of lead. Just be sure to extract spent Bullets when nobody is shooting

Fuse links are mostly made from Zinc, copper, Aluminum or silver.....

I have a question for you brother what do you do with all the other metals once you've remove the lead ie. Copper, steel jackets

Typically fuses are made of NiChrome wire or sheeting.

Those things you were wondering about might be parts to a bench 6:00

The piece you showed marked tin is a piece of tin and lead alloy mixed

There are two kinds of pewter. The old pewter has a blue look to it. It has around 8% lead in it. That alloy is good for bullets. The new lead free pewter has a silver look to it. It is safe to eat off of or drink out of. I make toy soldiers out of it.

I did not know about the lead wraps on wine bottles!

Fishing sinkers is my excuse

That looks like it said 1 in to me not Tin and the rectangular width seems to be 1 in.

Tire shops are getting super stingy around here

Elvis, I've got several buckets of hard lead medical radiology containers. Are those any good for casting? I don't know the brinell (BHN) value.

Any local recycling of steel will have lead for sale

The Romans would have laughed at the thought of "health nuts" freaking out over lead wrappers on wine bottles since they made their wine in lead vats.

I found 3 pounds of lead pipe in the wall. Now thats a deal.

Do u have a foundry to melt that stuff down..