cutting lead?

A friend gave me some race car weights that are shaped like a brick. They are lead and should work well for making jig heads. What is the best way to get them into smaller pieces?

You can melt them down and pour them in smaller ingots. Some use muffin pans. Be careful when melting lead. Do a search on melting and pouring lead and follow the safety guidelines. It's better to be safe than scarred!

I use a saws-all with a metal cutting blade.

I take a file on a block of wood and slice our straps for suck decoys. Depending on how big the blocks are a maul might word for you. No lead sliver's everywhere.

Find a cast iron dutch oven type pot at a yard sale, and heat them over a coleman camp stove til they melt and scoop it with a kitchen ladle into a mold of whatever shape will fit in your melting pot to pour your jigs. Cutting is a pain to me. I have used the cast iron for about 10 yrs and it also helps to float the trash to the top and fluxing to keep it clean in your pouring pot.

I have even used a hand held jig saw with a metal blade to cut it up. Skeeter has the right Idea in melding it. No need to cut it up unless it is too big to get in a lead pot. I try to get smaller lead pieces but as I know beggers can't be chosers.

Redman

I usually buy 15 lb. at a time and it comes in three 5 lb. ingots that are attached to each other with a thin ribbon of lead. I'll saw thru this and take a big pair of pliers and put it in my melting pot. I remove it from time to time to see how much has melted. If there is plenty of room left in the pot, I drop whatever is left. Just need to make sure it's not anywhere near the top when it finishes melting.

I pour this into a cast iron cornpone pan. They will cool off really fast. I dump them on concrete where they can finish cooling and then I pour some more.

Make sure you keep hot lead away from children, pets, or other adults. Also make sure to keep it away from water because one drop can cause it to splatter which could result in serious injury.


When I finish I put them in plastic bags and store them in an old tacklebox.

Metal blade saw works well...I don't know about race car weights but car tire weights are not my favorite! too much other trash inside the lead and hard too!

I'm with Skeetbum, I use a heavy cast iron pot and a turkey fryer. My set-up will melt lead in 15-20mins, about 80#'s. Iwas given some awesome equipment this spring by an ol' timer. I received a cast-iron tea-pot with a square spout, an ingot tray which makes 1/2 tennis ball sized ingots 28 of them. I melt scrap lead with the pot and the fryer cranked up, I use long-pliers and tongs to hold or move the lead. You can't put your hand over the pot at all. I'll melt for ingots first, then I'll melt for the tea-pot which I use for bigger stuff, like downrigger weights. I don't care for wheel weights in jigs or spoons, but they work good for 8# rigger weights. I love plumbing lead: pipe,traps, it'll look like a campfire when I start. I can melt down 300# into usable size ingots in about an hour. Plumbing lead is self-fluxing usually, when the greases and fats start melting and burning they do the same thing as flux. Just make sure your lead is dry and when melting pipe make sure there's no kinks or smashed ends, the pressure will build and you've made a BOMB. I do this all outside and I keep the slag which can be converted back into usable lead, but not by me cause it takes 1200* to desulfate lead. Molten lead is mesmerizing and with a little safety and knowledge is somewhat safe. Here's a quick tidbit, lead comes from galena which is decomposed uranium, not depleted uranium which is even more toxic. Lead only combines with a handful of molecules which produce slag basically. And there's not many lead-alloys available either. Zeiners Bass Shop has an excellent webpage for beginners.