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Price Of Lead

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http://www.infomine.com/investment/metal-prices/lead/6-month/

 

I checked several sources and in general the price of lead has been declining for several months.  However none of the lead sellers in quantities I am likely to buy has dropped their price at all. Out of curiosity I looked to see if I could find a source for lead in modest or even modestly large quantities closer to market price, but didn't really get anywhere.  

 

So, have any of you guys who have been buying lead for a long time noticed any affect on retail over the years based on the trading price?  

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Bob,

   I have been buying all of my lead from Roto-Metals. Reason being, is that it is consistent as far as quality, clean and shipping is free. I do get free lead from a dentist, but not enough for what I need. Roto-Metals price is about $2.00 give or take per pound. I have never seen it at $1.50 or even $1.75/pound. I have also bought some lead from a guy in Ohio, and then he wanted more that I was paying at Roto-Metals. So back to Roto-Metals it is for me.

Edited by cadman
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http://www.infomine.com/investment/metal-prices/lead/6-month/

 

I checked several sources and in general the price of lead has been declining for several months.  However none of the lead sellers in quantities I am likely to buy has dropped their price at all. Out of curiosity I looked to see if I could find a source for lead in modest or even modestly large quantities closer to market price, but didn't really get anywhere.  

 

So, have any of you guys who have been buying lead for a long time noticed any affect on retail over the years based on the trading price?  

 

Really? they didn't lower their price? :eek:

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Really? they didn't lower their price? :eek:

 

Hey David,

   It kind of reminds me, when gas prices were lower, you could buy a quart of motor oil for 99 cents. When gas prices went up, motor oil was $2.00 a quart. Now that gas prices are lower, why doesn't the motor oil go down as well. :?:?:?:?

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Cad, which are you buying, pure or the antimonial lead?

I buy both. I prefer the antimonial, as it is a little harder, however I will also use the pure for spinnerbaits and heads that don't pour well in my molds. I don't know about anyone else that buys lead from them, but there pure is not as soft as some of the lead I have gotten from members on other sites.

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Ive got a place around me that sells at 150$ a 100# ingot. That is pure pure good stuff (supposedly) i think its 98-99 percent pure.  there are guys on craigslist with scrap asking like 80c a pound. i saw a guy the other day asking 50c a pound though. i was tempted to go buy it all up and mel it down to sell for more but lead is kinda annoying to melt like that, especially  500 pounds. its even worse for you too with all the impurities

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Cad, I just picked up 45 pounds of the pure to give it a try. Bought some on fleece bay and it was full of junk. Had to melt it al, flux the crap out of it and put into ingots. Hardship as heck. Think it came from a range but that was not in the write up. I will cut some of it with the pure.

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Well I guess it all depends on what you guys want. I used to buy a lot of lead from different places. Never did I get it for .50 cents maybe $1.50 all said and done with shipping. However there are a lot of drawbacks to doing this:

 

#1. You don't know what kind of lead it is. They tell you it's pure soft and many time the seller doesn't even know.

#2. It's usually very dirty, so you have to flux and clean it, to get it usable, and in doing this you have to melt it down in a cast iron pot and probably use propane to get it all melted. Best case scenario, is you get dirty lead, worse case it has been attached to drywall and you have to clean all that as well

#3 Finally most of it comes in too big of chunks, so you have to cut it to melt it and make ingots out of it.

 

All said and done, when you buy used you don't know what you're getting. I feel that if I have to spend all that time to prep lead for use, and it takes me a day or more to melt 1000lbs, then it is not worth it. I even had a guy sell me slabs of lead, that I had to cut. Well that was a chore in itself. You can use an axe, but that was kind of dangerous. I then tried a band saw, and that worked but was slow and lead particles got all over the basement floor. Then I tried a Sawzall, and that was better, but again it was slow, broke blades and when you use all these tools, you introduce lead in everything you touch again later. I rather buy clean chunks and have them ready to just put in my pot without any work. However that is me, it may be worth for others to do it their way. It's all relative.

Edited by cadman
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cadman is dead on . If you have the area and want to brave big hunks of lead 100 lbs or more , the fastest way to cut it is to spread out a 20 foot cheapo tarp . Take a chain saw to it . The tarp is to collect the cuttings . Also wear boots gloves long pants . Those chips are hot .

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I hit the local scrap yard.  $0.75 a pound.  I'm allowed to go through the barrel and pick what I want.  Lots of flashing and for some reason stained glass lead.  I've also picked up some very hard lead for the same price.  So hard it rings when you drop it.  Some of it was marked and was high antimony ingots.

 

The lead I'm picking out is pretty pure and very soft.  I've though about offering it for sale.  I pour it into muffin tins once I smelt and flux it.  But selling it sounds like work and I have a severe allergy to it.

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@goodtimes, i think it might have been that one, lol  :lol:.  When the mood stikes me, i will melt those big ones into a pot and use a big cast iron ladle to pour it into ingot molds. I save alot of the lead sinkers i find fishing lakes or from shore and those are very very dirty. i put them in a big pot over propane. just keep stiring till it all comes to the surface and spoon it out. I have never had to flux but i only pour my own stuff so maybe it helps more with high quantities when pouring. I recently was out at a wildlife area that allows duck hunting and probably got 10 or 20 lbs in old decoy weights. as stated i pour for myself so that will last a bit. 

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The lead I'm picking out is pretty pure and very soft.  I've though about offering it for sale.  I pour it into muffin tins once I smelt and flux it.  But selling it sounds like work and I have a severe allergy to it.

 

If you decide to sell the soft stuff, I know you can put up to #70 in a medium flat rate box. Make sure you wrap the box really well with string or nylon stranded tape as the box will break apart. Anyway if you decide to sell some, PM me as I might be interested.

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If you decide to sell the soft stuff, I know you can put up to #70 in a medium flat rate box. Make sure you wrap the box really well with string or nylon stranded tape as the box will break apart. Anyway if you decide to sell some, PM me as I might be interested.

 

Will do.  I know how to ship it.  I buy bullets and they are shipped the same way.

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A buddy of mine has shipped me boxes of scrap lead a few times.  He makes a wood crate out of scraps of plywood, old pallets and screws that fits inside the box.  I've done the same thing to ship other stuff.  It works.  I shipped the whole main back plain with all the control electronics for a mill that way once.  I just screwed the back plane to the inside of the crate and boxed the crate.  The crate was made to exactly fit the box.  

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I buy from my local scrap yard at 1$ a pound.

They pay .20 cents a pound for it.

They sell all they get in so they have no reason to lower their price.

When I go in if they have some they let me pick and choose what I want.

Last year I bought 756# for .90 cents a pound from am old boss of mine. It was lead strips from some lead coated cable and pure soft lead.

He didn't know what lead sells for but agreed to sell it to me for .90 cents since I used to work for him.

Granted I live in Alaska so shipping often kills us here.

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I do the same as my good friend Cadman and it was him that turned me on to Rotometals. I ruined 10lbs of lead by zinc contamination that I wasn't sure as it was wheel weight lead that I melted down into ingots. I mix my own alloys and I use to get pure soft lead from the plumber that lived next door to me and I'd get wheel weights from a garage down the street, I have a separate pot and a LEE Ingot mold and I melt down the soft lead into 1lb ingots and the wheel weight lead into 1/2lb ingots as a way of telling them apart and it makes it easy to make a harder or softer alloy. I use 70/30 mix soft to hard for spinnerbaits and a 60/40 for jigs and when I added my wheel weights for the jig alloy it got a weird consistency and it wouldn't pour no matter how much I fluxed, I got rid of all the lead in the pot and shut down until I know what caused it so I sent an email to LEE and looked on the internet myself and I found what I thought was the problem and it was confirmed by the response I got from LEE, and that was I melted down a lot of newer wheel weights with a high zinc content and after that experience I buy pure soft and antimonial lead from Rotometals. Yes, I probably pay a little more but it actually works out as I get very few incomplete pours or have any problems and to give an example of that, I recently poured up some heads to get ready for hair jig season as I do every season, simple weedless ball heads and Walleye heads and in 3 straight years I haven't had an incomplete pour and I do about 1000 per season and while it doesn't sound like a major feat, it means that my collars and barbs are all perfectly formed and when using the scrap lead I'd do about 100 jigs or so and I'd get a few that had small voids in the collar area or barbs not fully formed. The other thing is the amount of slag or dross is decreased, when I'd get scrap lead I would have to empty my slag bucket about once a month, now the last time I emptied it was 2 years ago as I flux every single pot and every time I start up and every time I add lead and the amount of slag I get in a week of pouring everyday would fit on a teaspoon with space to spare, as I said, it may cost me a little more to get my lead from Rotometals but the quality is top notch and well worth the price.

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But that's how you learn.

An education is going to cost you one way or another.

Ain't that the truth.

When I have a problem first thing I do is look back on past experiences to help figure it out.

Then I come here and use the search feature and lastly post up a thread looking for the solution. often times #1 fixes the problem because I have had it happen before and remember the fix.

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