gary reeder
several years ago at a gun show I traded a fellow
Wednesday, March 02, 2022, 22:10

for some work on one of his guns for a Magma 90LB lead pot. It runs on 220 but that's OK. I use it to melt down the recovered bullets that we shoot every day in the shop. When I get a 5 gallon bucket of recovered bullets (about 250 lbs) I spend a few hours melting them down into ingots.

The bullets are covered with sand from the big 55 gallon plastic drum filled with wet sand that we shoot into. I scoop a bunch of the bullets, lead, jackets and all into the big pot.

I put a hunk of wax into the pot for fluxing the mixture. As the wax begins to melt it starts to smoke. I stick a match to it and it flames up. I stir it and when the flame goes out or almost out it is fluxed and the pure lead mixture is covered with all the slag, empty jackets and dirt that floats to the top.



I scoop all the slag, impurities and jackets off and the pure lead mixture is underneath and ready to cast into ingots.



in an afternoon I can usually cast a couple of 5 gallon buckets of recovered bullets, usually 800 to 900 lbs. Cast into 1 lb, 3 lb and 5 lb ingots they are easier to store for later use. I have an RCBS 20LB pot that I can use for the 1 and 3lb ingots. The 5 lb ingots go under my bench in storage and when I need some lead they go back in the big pot for later use or to melt down into the smaller ingots..