Sipsey Street Irregulars: Praxis: Take that, collectivism! How I labored on Labor Day.

Tuesday, September 3, 2013

Praxis: Take that, collectivism! How I labored on Labor Day.

Labor Day in the United States is a holiday celebrated on the first Monday in September. It is a celebration of the American labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of workers. It constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of their country. -- Wikipedia.

I've been collecting range scrap in small lots pretty much all summer and today I went to a friend's house where we melted all that stuff down and cast it into handy ingots for bullet casting. Here is some of the raw material:

We began with 203 pounds of jacketed range scrap, 18 pounds of cast range scrap and 15 pounds of "cowboy" range scrap (mostly what I call "cowboy scabs" recovered from in front of the steel targets these very soft projectiles are fired at). Here is the cast and cowboy raw material, cast on the left, cowboy on the right.

We also melted some pewter into small ingots for alloying later (pewter, high in tin, helps harden the projectiles). I was disappointed that some of the "pewter" turned out not be, even one cup that was marked "English Pewter" and "Made in Sheffield." Dirty lying Brits.

Here is the set-up. We used two propane cookers under an awning at the back of the property. We ran an extension cord out to a box fan to keep the fumes blowing away from us as we worked.

The pewter yielded a disappointing 7 pounds. All ingots are marked, in the xase of the pewter as "PEW." Still, as I only had about 25 bucks in the pewter (picked up over time at yard sales, estate sales and thrift stores) this wasn't a terribly uneconomic yield. Still, it could have been better, but I am learning more about pewter markings and what not to buy.

For fluxing we used the red wax off of Gouda cheese packaging and it seemed to work very well, superior to crayons certainly.

In the end, our efforts yielded:

Cowboy lead (CBY) 14 pounds

Cast scrap (CRS) 16 pounds

Jacketed scrap (JRS) 140 pounds.

7 comments:

jon said...: for some reason clicking on the photos for the big version still only shows me the thumbnail. still looks like a good time, though.; September 3, 2013 at 7:32 AM
Uncle Lar said...: Oh for the days when linotype was cheap and plentiful.
I'm assuming that the cast scrap is about right, the cowboy scrap is mostly lead with just a bit of tin and antimony, and the jacketed scrap is pretty much pure lead.
Using old pewter stuff for the tin is something I'd not heard of before. Great idea.; September 3, 2013 at 8:59 AM
Jim22 said...: That's the easy part. When you get to casting, sizing, lubing, packaging, and loading it will take a lot longer. But it's rewarding.

Best thing is a couple of bullet moulds. They don't have to be the same style. Multiple cavities work well.

When you get going on the casting the moulds will heat up, requiring a minute or so for the bullets to harden. While you are waiting you can fill another mould.

You'll need a separate container for the cut off sprues.; September 3, 2013 at 9:56 AM
Rider said...: Mike, can one use the lead out of car batteries?; September 3, 2013 at 2:47 PM
SciFiJim said...: Car batteries are not a source for boolit lead. Please read the following forum thread for the particulars.

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?138362-Why-Car-Batteries-Are-Dangerous

Please don't harm yourself or others by using car batteries!; September 3, 2013 at 11:22 PM
Anonymous said...: How exactly does one go about getting access to range scrap? I get the cowboy scrap, kinda, as it would be lying on the ground near the steel plates. Do you dig in the burms at out door ranges for the other? And how well would jacketed scrap work in melting down to mould new boolits? Would you have copper shreds in the middle of your new lead casts? I guess I have a lot to learn.; September 9, 2013 at 9:54 PM
Dutchman6 said...: I do not dig berms. Very bad form around here and it will get you escorted out and told never to come back. No, all I do is pick them up off the surface. Best time is after a couple of days of hard rain. Pick a washout that's been carved by the water in the bank and there they are, sitting like so many dandelions on the surface, waiting to be plucked. The lead melts out of the jackets and the jackets float to the surface. You take a fryer tool, get a number of the jackets in the slotted bowl and gently shake them from side to side. Most residual lead still in the jackets flows out and back into the pot. Take the jackets and put into another container and sell them for scrap afterward. Out of 200 pounds of jacketed range scrap we netted 60 pounds of dirty copper. Fluxing removes the small particles. Discard the fluxed dross. What is left over is pure lead, no copper shreds.; September 10, 2013 at 5:56 AM

"Progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress."

I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave. -- H.L. Mencken

"The Fate of Unborn Millions. . ."

"The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their Houses, and Farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they consigned to a State of Wretchedness from which no human efforts will probably deliver them. The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army-Our cruel and unrelenting Enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance, or the most abject submission; that is all we can expect-We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die." -- George Washington to his troops before the Battle of Long Island.

"We will not go gently . . ."

This is no small thing, to restore a republic after it has fallen into corruption. I have studied history for years and I cannot recall it ever happening. It may be that our task is impossible. Yet, if we do not try then how will we know it can't be done? And if we do not try, it most certainly won't be done. The Founders' Republic, and the larger war for western civilization, will be lost.

But I tell you this: We will not go gently into that bloody collectivist good night. Indeed, we will make with our defiance such a sound as ALL history from that day forward will be forced to note, even if they despise us in the writing of it.

And when we are gone, the scattered, free survivors hiding in the ruins of our once-great republic will sing of our deeds in forbidden songs, tending the flickering flame of individual liberty until it bursts forth again, as it must, generations later. We will live forever, like the Spartans at Thermopylae, in sacred memory.

-- Mike Vanderboegh, The Lessons of Mumbai:Death Cults, the "Socialism of Imbeciles" and Refusing to Submit, 1 December 2008

"A common language of resistance . . ."

"Colonial rebellions throughout the modern world have been acts of shared political imagination. Unless unhappy people develop the capacity to trust other unhappy people, protest remains a local affair easily silenced by traditional authority. Usually, however, a moment arrives when large numbers of men and women realize for the first time that they enjoy the support of strangers, ordinary people much like themselves who happen to live in distant places and whom under normal circumstances they would never meet. It is an intoxicating discovery. A common language of resistance suddenly opens to those who are most vulnerable to painful retribution the possibility of creating a new community. As the conviction of solidarity grows, parochial issues and aspirations merge imperceptibly with a compelling national agenda which only a short time before may have been the dream of only a few. For many Americans colonists this moment occurred late in the spring of 1774." -- T.H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence, Oxford University Press, 2004, p.1.

Sipsey Street Irregulars

Tuesday, September 3, 2013

Praxis: Take that, collectivism! How I labored on Labor Day.

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