Melt it, the acid will off gas, just do it outside and don't breath the fumes. I would rinse it of with water first.

 

Sealed - battery , throw it on a rock on top of the road and let the acid leak out

Regular - take the cap off and pour it out - I would save the acid it has many uses

Most used car batterys acid is not strong enouth for a bad burn MOST , I am a scraper I deal with batterys almost every day and had 1000's leak on my bare skin and have never ben burned by it


casting the lead is more dangerous then the de-aciding,
Rember never add a cold ladle to hot lead

 

Most used car batterys acid is not strong enouth for a bad burn MOST , I am a scraper I deal with batterys almost every day and had 1000's leak on my bare skin and have never ben burned by it


casting the lead is more dangerous then the de-aciding,
Rember never add a cold ladle to hot lead

It depends on how long it is on your skin. I had a battery explode on me but luckily I turned my head at just that moment to look at a volt meter. Fortunately I was able to immediately douse myself with water (another good reason to have water with you everywhere). It took about 10 to 20 seconds to get to the water, but I wasn't badly burned - might have been different if I couldn't get water over me because I didn't have any.

It did ruin my clothes though.

Some newer batteries have some toxic chemicals mixed in with the lead - like cadmium - not that lead isn't toxic either. Just saying that the fumes are probably not good for you.

 

i did some research on using batterys for lead bullet casting a year or two ago.from what i understood and was told, the plates themselves are really not a good quality lead for bullets,possibly alloyed with zinc. now the posts and the chunk attached to the post inside the battery is usually pure lead.

 

I went and did some reading on this not long ago. There are different types of batteries. Apparently the big deep cycle batteries are still for the most part lead, so useful for this. But the sealed 'maintenance free' batteries have some form of calcium in the mix that creates alot of problems. You don't want to be any where near one, even outside when melting one down.

 

Far easier and safer to remove the main stack and/or water pipes from a house and get hundreds of pounds of good casting lead.

 

If you want lead just go to a shooting range with a sieve,or someplace that is fished alot.
If you have a metal detector all the better.
I find lots of lead this way.

 

I cast my own ammo now and have been for awhile. DO NOT USE CAR BATTERY LEAD FOR PROJECTILES!!

Casting is not a crude caveman thing it takes alot of tinkering and adjusting and measuring even the lead alloy has to be correct for the application you are using just cause something contains some lead doesn't mean you can use it.

If you want to cast bullets you can't just get some car batteries and a mold and figure it out later. Start casting now so you perfect your loads and get the hang of it and you save alot of money do some calculations and it will blow your mind they are better for your gun once you have everything down lead is softer than copper so it doesn't wear your barrel out as much and lead hollow points expand better than ones with a copper jacket.

If you want to get into casting make a sifter out of hardware cloth and pan the berms at the range with the owners permission this way you get alot of lead and you can sell the copper jackets and get enough to pay for powder and primers so you get FREE ammo. It just takes sweat and time.

 

Listen to jamesconn. He speaks truth. Car batteries are a bad idea. There is a process to casting. It is time consuming. You have to know what you are doing. You have to have molds, lube, know what the temperature should be and have a way of monitoring the temp while casting. If its for a high powered rifle then you need gas checks. You need to research this a bit more imma thinking.

 

Don't use batteries! The little bit of calcium contaminated lead to be had from them isn't worth the health risks of the salvage. Wheel weights and lead pipes are where it's at! :thumb:

 

Most houses haven't had lead pipes for decades. Last time I saw a lead pipe in a house I was a kid and the house was built in the late 1800s. I thought I was superman because I could bend the pipe (I was about 8 years old) - but my older brother informed me it was just because the pipe was made from lead instead of steel.

Most pipes since have been made from copper/bronze/steel or plastic.

 

Well maybe you should exit your suburbia built after the 1970s and investigate houses and commercial/industrial structures built before then and you'll find that maybe some of them had their plumbing water pipes replaced to copper etc. but their toilet bend is still lead and that can weigh many hundreds of pounds but many places have not replaced their main line water pipes (the one from the city pipes) and the sewer lines (to the city sewers or a septic field) and a four foot section of that lead pipe weighs about thirty pounds which means hundreds, even thousands of bullets although you will have to dig them up or for the bend maybe remove a bit of the ceiling.

The water pipes to your taps were almost entirely made from galvanized steel except in houses built prior to around the 1890s and you wouldn't have been able to bend them...I went to the scrap yard and bought lengths of that same steel pipe and used them in our clothes closets as you can hang probably all your and your wife's clothes on one and they wouldn't bend.

Using car batteries is dangerous to you and the environment...The water required to wash the plates clean is contaminated by the acid (that was probably just dumped on the ground)...The vapours that are emitted from the pot will kill you if breathed in long enough and for what, two, three, five pounds of extremely poor, extremely soft, quality lead that you'll have to add additional alloys to so the can be cast hard enough just isn't worth it...Take a hack saw and cut the toilet bend or use a sledge hammer and bash the pipe and you'll have a harder and far safer material to produce bullets from.

I was lucky and got hold of many hundreds of pounds of Linotype lead when a printing shop closed down and have used that but we routinely sift our backstops for the expanded bullets and recast them.

Wheel weights are a great source for a base for casting but in their case they are too hard so you have to again add alloys to get a good bullet...For fishing weights, jig heads, toy soldiers they're great, bullets not.

 

I worked in a auto battery factory for a few years. I've just about every job from casting the lead parts to mixing the acid and filling/charging the batteries.

Yes, the acid in batteries are of different strenghs, but they are similar. I have gotten a lot of acid on me, daily in some departments (unavoidable). I've gotten it on my my entire body including face, eyes, and in my mouth (very bitter taste, don't prep it). I've even had a few explode in my face blowing the top off. It will eat through clothing very fast (few hours), but it usuually just gives a really bad swollen itchy rash where it makes skin contact (few hours).

Anyways, I wouldn't reccomend the lead from batteries. Yes the posts and the plates inside are pure lead, however; the plates arn't solid, they are actually stacks of thin grids. There is a "paste mixture" that is mixed and pressed onto the grid. The acutal amount of lead in the plates if relativly small compared to the weight of the battery.

 

lead wheel weights are getting difficult to find. Stash them. I have used them for pistol projectiles for years. they work fine, also nail a few varmints. Of course here in California they are illegal to use on game. California has taken the backdoor approach to stop hunting. I was going to make a comment about our politicians but I'll keep the post friendly.

 

They're not a great source of lead. They're a great source of cadmium poisoning while you're melting that lead. For more research, hit any of the traditional muzzleloading forums and search. It has been discussed on all of them and some very important warnings posted.

 

Im A plumber , when we work with lead (dirty used lead) I place a chunk of parfin wax in the pot it combines with many impuritys to burn them off ( althow it still some base ellements )

also for the last 20 or so years "lead" that has ben sold for plumbing purposses is a alloy

 

I would not use car battery lead.

There are literally thousands of wheel weights either on cars or in and around streets and tire shops

Most of your houses built before 1970 have a lead tub/shower traps (accesible from under the house) and where the sewer vent jack that slides in under the shingles and the sewer vent goes through. There is most likely a lead shower pan under the tile in your shower too. These changed to copper and then to plastic in the 80's

 

Lead in plumbing is a reginal thing , One location it will be traps , another it will be cauked joints or closet bends Some of todays houses are touted as lead free
It all depends on the codes of when the structure was built/renovated

 

No, No, No, NO!!!

Unless you have a pretty sophisticated smelter and lab to test for impurities you will not get good lead suitable for bullets from batteries but you will have a fairly decent chance of getting deathly ill if you are on the wrong side of the pot when the fumes are coming out. Some of the alloys found in battery plates are antimony, calcium, arsenic, copper, tin, strontium, aluminum, selenium, bismuth and silver. A recycling plant can handle all of those but they do it every day by the ton. It really would not be worth the time or health risk for the little bit of lead you could get out of a battery.

 

Does anyone know what acceptable compostion(s) for ammo are ? Not in a legal way but A long term use way

 

Impurities like zinc change the surface tension of molten lead making it impossible to completely fill the void in a bullet mold, other impurities can make the lead to brittle for use. The old linotype was 4% tin and 11% antimony and made very hard bullets that were about as good as you could possibly make but 1 part tin to 10 parts lead is a good rule of thumb or just pure lead which is soft but makes the best round balls for muzzle loaders. Biggest mistake most people make is not preheating the mold and getting the lead to hot. clean the pot after every use and flux often, especially after adding new lead to the pot. The bullets age after they cool off and will harden gradually over time, (years), but unless you are a match shooter looking for a very specific hardness that won't be a consideration for you.

I use beeswax when I am down to fairly clean lead but my initial flux material is a handful of sawdust and I use an old fish scaler for scooping out the detritus from the pot after the sawdust burns off. Not fancy but it works.

 

Good points guys.

 

Old Grump , Your parts and % they are by weight correct ?

Im very famillar with lead casting but not ballistic wise - my grandfather cast toy lead figures as a hobbie

 

By weight yes, and chances are your grandfather was using pure lead which would have made good shot or slugs or round balls for muzzle loaders but a little tin and antimony added to make good bullets for centerfire rifles.

 

the smelting of lead is a very tricky process.

Metallic lead that results from the roasting and blast furnace processes still contains significant contaminants of arsenic, antimony, bismuth, zinc, copper, silver, and gold. The melt is treated in a reverberatory furnace with air, steam, and sulfur, which oxidizes the contaminants except silver, gold, and bismuth. The oxidized contaminants are removed by drossing, where they float to the top and are skimmed off.[42][44] Since lead ores contain significant concentrations of silver, the smelted metal also is commonly contaminated with silver. Metallic silver as well as gold is removed and recovered economically by means of the Parkes process.[21][42][44] Desilvered lead is freed of bismuth according to the Betterton-Kroll process by treating it with metallic calcium and magnesium, which forms a bismuth dross that can be skimmed off.[42][44] Very pure lead can be obtained by processing smelted lead electrolytically by means of the Betts process. The process uses anodes of impure lead and cathodes of pure lead in an electrolyte of silica fluoride.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead

My source of good lead years ago was a old skeet and trap range where i used a gold dry washer to recover the pellets.
http://www.treasurenet.com/forums/a...ld-prospecting-equipment-drywasher-urgent-help-needed-chuck-s-drywasher-web.jpg
I still have about 3 50# blocks plus bagged shot for reloading.