# Community > Volunteers >  Help Offered  Range Contamination

## 300CALMAN

Well here we go.  I understand that there are a few shooting clubs out there that may be having some issues with their Council over lead contamination. Yes its come up a few times recently and is yet another stick that They use to beat us the shooting community.

I have been around in the contaminated land field for a fair while and so have decided that maybe I can help out. The best way I can do this is probably offering free advice.  So ask away or PM me if you want.  

Unfortunately its no laughing matter, the Boys Town range was conveniently shut because of it and lead contamination and I fear it wont be the last.

Shooting range shut over lead concerns - National - NZ Herald News

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## Tommy

And here was me thinking you were offering to contaminate some poor buggers land  :Thumbsup:

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## Gibo

Sweet, how long will it take you to pick out all the lead mate? You must be a patient bugger

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## Maca49

Lead magnet picks it up ok @Gibo

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## 300CALMAN

> Sweet, how long will it take you to pick out all the lead mate? You must be a patient bugger


You really do miss Systolic don't you @Gibo  :Grin:

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## 300CALMAN

> And here was me thinking you were offering to contaminate some poor buggers land


That too can be arranged...

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## Gibo

> Lead magnet picks it up ok @Gibo


Barracudas dont last long enough out of water bugger it  :Have A Nice Day:

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## 300CALMAN

OK so I expected a bit of stick for this one, anyone else?  :XD:

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## Beaker

Modified gold trommal, and recover the lead, melt, recast and reinsert into ground at high velocity?
 Helping 2 ways  :Have A Nice Day:

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## 300CALMAN

> Modified gold trommal, and recover the lead, melt, recast and reinsert into ground at high velocity?
>  Helping 2 ways


We are in Business!

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## MassiveAttack

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, I return this lead to the earth from whence it came.

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## stug

Saw a video on YouTube of a guy getting the shovel and screen out and digging through the backstop for the spent projectiles, cleaned them up, melted them down and recast them.

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## Maca49

There must be some seriously lead contaminated land in the UK with hundreds of years of lead shot. How serious is the situation in NZ? or is it just a perceived prob. I can understand a little the inside ranges, but thats contained and can be managed and Ive only ever know one person with diagnosed lead poisoning, did shit loads of .22 inside range shooting. I used to eat lead paint off my toys as a baby and always had my mouth full of lead slugs in my teens, made thousands of lead projectiles and my old mate has cast thousands more than me, with yearly tests for lead poisoning and never had a negative result, the doc concluded the tests were as waste of time.
Maybe thats why my arse drags on the ground a bit these days?
Are we just too PC?

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## Gibo

> There must be some seriously lead contaminated land in the UK with hundreds of years of lead shot. How serious is the situation in NZ? or is it just a perceived prob. I can understand a little the inside ranges, but thats contained and can be managed and Ive only ever know one person with diagnosed lead poisoning, did shit loads of .22 inside range shooting. I used to eat lead paint off my toys as a baby and always had my mouth full of lead slugs in my teens, made thousands of lead projectiles and my old mate has cast thousands more than me, with yearly tests for lead poisoning and never had a negative result, the doc concluded the tests were as waste of time.
> Maybe thats why my arse drags on the ground a bit these days?
> Are we just too PC?


Most kids chew pencils too, although not many pencils are used these days

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## Maca49

> Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, I return this lead to the earth from whence it came.


We used to have sand traps for easy recovery of the lead with a sieve

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## Maca49

> Most kids chew pencils too, although not many pencils are used these days


Ive had mine chewed a bit

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## Gibo

> Ive had mine chewed a bit


Back when your 'friends' still had teeth aye  :Wink:

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## gonetropo

> Most kids chew pencils too, although not many pencils are used these days


the lead in pencils is graphite (carbon) . i wonder if kids chewed enough of them they would keep keep the loopy greeny nutters quiet by claiming they are carbon neutral

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## Maca49

> Back when your 'friends' still had teeth aye


You have light bulbs for breaky? yr on fire!

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## Maca49

> the lead in pencils is graphite (carbon) . i wonder if kids chewed enough of them they would keep keep the loopy greeny nutters quiet by claiming they are carbon neutral


and save some of the $1.5billion we are hooked up to?

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## stug



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## P38

> There must be some seriously lead contaminated land in the UK with hundreds of years of lead shot. How serious is the situation in NZ? or is it just a perceived prob. I can understand a little the inside ranges, but thats contained and can be managed and Ive only ever know one person with diagnosed lead poisoning, did shit loads of .22 inside range shooting. I used to eat lead paint off my toys as a baby and always had my mouth full of lead slugs in my teens, made thousands of lead projectiles and my old mate has cast thousands more than me, with yearly tests for lead poisoning and never had a negative result, the doc concluded the tests were as waste of time.
> Maybe thats why my arse drags on the ground a bit these days?
> Are we just too PC?


Same here

We drank the water collected from our roof for years

The roof was painted with lead based paint and held in place with lead head nails.

Cheers
Pete

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## WallyR

Jeez - you guys crack me up  :Thumbsup:

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## Gibo

> Same here
> 
> We drank the water collected from our roof for years
> 
> The roof was painted with lead based paint and held in place with lead head nails.
> 
> Cheers
> Pete


Duh, that's why you guys are addicted to lead  :Grin:

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## zimmer

It is probably more a case of "what you don't know you don't know".

One of the classic cases of lead poisoning was here Lead poisoning of Port Pirie children: a long history of looking the other way

I served my time in a fertiliser works. The sulphuric acid making plant was all made of lead, huge quantities of lead sheeting, lead pipes, special pumps with lead impellors etc. (great for me as I was into BP shooting then). The guys that worked with the lead were called "lead burners" - was a recognized trade way back. They were regularly blood tested for lead absorption. I can remember on the odd occasions members of that department being stood down from working with lead due to getting excess reading in their blood tests. Stood down until subsequent blood tests showed level had dropped. And of course standards were pretty slack back then. Look how we used to treat asbestos.

My smallbore club (long since folded) shot in a war memorial hall, thru under the stage. The mound was the highly polished hall floor. I used to see dusty powder out in front of the mound at the end of a night's shooting. I used to assume it was all burnt powder but have often wondered if there was any minute lead dust in it as well. And despite regular cleans our lead traps and the area were a mess with lots of dust everywhere. They backstops were angle plates which directed the lead into sand traps but the bullets striking the plates inevitably generated lead dust.

And yes my current house roof although having no lead head nails has lead flashing, and we are on tank water.

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## zimmer

Visited Port Pirie in the 80s (tried not to breath whilst there), a depressing town.

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## Angus_A

> There must be some seriously lead contaminated land in the UK with hundreds of years of lead shot. How serious is the situation in NZ? or is it just a perceived prob. I can understand a little the inside ranges, but thats contained and can be managed and Ive only ever know one person with diagnosed lead poisoning, did shit loads of .22 inside range shooting. I used to eat lead paint off my toys as a baby and always had my mouth full of lead slugs in my teens, made thousands of lead projectiles and my old mate has cast thousands more than me, with yearly tests for lead poisoning and never had a negative result, the doc concluded the tests were as waste of time.
> Maybe thats why my arse drags on the ground a bit these days?
> Are we just too PC?


I remember back in my stoner days we used to go up to wrights hill fortress a lot and what used to be a burm at the very top field that was pretty contaminated. You could take a chunk of dirt out with your hand and come out with at least a few bullets.
Incidentally and totally unrelated to this conversation, if you ever find yourself there, there's a crumbling bunker type thing right at the top with a weirdly well done painting of an SS officer giving a salute inside behind a bunch of overgrowth. Pretty bizarre.

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## R93

> 


I know it's US currency but the cheapest I can get primers are 4.5 cents each.

Already behind. 😆
Still you can load 9 or 40 pretty cheap if shooting cast.

Powder coating the projectiles is interesting?

Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk

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## Angus_A

> I know it's US currency but the cheapest I can get primers are 4.5 cents each.
> 
> Already behind. 
> Still you can load 9 or 40 pretty cheap if shooting cast.
> 
> Powder coating the projectiles is interesting?
> 
> Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk


I've seen a few US reloaders doing it now, apparently saves the need for lube, but it's also pretty hotly debated so i don't know if it's true or not.

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## 300CALMAN

I have always wanted to give powder coating a go. Using something like this:

https://www.harborfreight.com/10-30-...tem-94244.html

Coincidental it will probably slow down corrosion of the projectiles  :Grin: 

Weather you believe lead is toxic or not your local council is convinced so that is a problem. Anyway I have been involved in the investigation and clean up of a few and yes some of them probably have enough lead to mine.

I am off to the range with my sieve.

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## 300CALMAN



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## Angus_A

> I have always wanted to give powder coating a go. Using something like this:
> 
> https://www.harborfreight.com/10-30-...tem-94244.html
> 
> Coincidental it will probably slow down corrosion of the projectiles 
> 
> Weather you believe lead is toxic or not your local council is convinced so that is a problem. Anyway I have been involved in the investigation and clean up of a few and yes some of them probably have enough lead to mine.
> 
> I am off to the range with my sieve.


Need a hand? Sounds like fun

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## Boaraxa

> There must be some seriously lead contaminated land in the UK with hundreds of years of lead shot. How serious is the situation in NZ? or is it just a perceived prob. I can understand a little the inside ranges, but thats contained and can be managed and Ive only ever know one person with diagnosed lead poisoning, did shit loads of .22 inside range shooting. I used to eat lead paint off my toys as a baby and always had my mouth full of lead slugs in my teens, made thousands of lead projectiles and my old mate has cast thousands more than me, with yearly tests for lead poisoning and never had a negative result, the doc concluded the tests were as waste of time.
> Maybe thats why my arse drags on the ground a bit these days?
> Are we just too PC?


I no a section of river round these parts that takes a bit of a hammering , one day I was down looking for heavy yellow stuff instead I found pounds of lead couldn't believe it I spent a few days there quietly working away till day 5 it sounded like world war 3 & felt like it 2 , lead plopping all over the show I started dropping really loud F bombs until the shooting closest to me stopped, turns out it was a monthly gathering , shooting clays one of the traps they fire over the river  :Sad:   can only imagine how much lead is on the downstream side.

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## canross

If the main issue is contaminated earth berms, then a dry washer is an easy way to separate out the lead. Basically it's a gold sluice that uses air instead of water. It generally works best with dry soil, but the benefit is that you don't need a huge water supply, and you don't have to worry about runoff. If you're concerned about dust you can enclose it and run water fogging nozzles around it so that any dust that comes out is caught before it drifts. Since berms need to be rebuild semi-regularly anyways, you run the dry washer during the rebuild and move your berm back and forth each time (Assuming a range with staggered raised berms for multiple distances). 

All the lead that is pulled out gets pre-dried and liquefied in a heavy walled trough to avoid vapor explosions - a large diameter steel pipe could be gas axed lengthwise for the trough - the heavy wall should transfer enough heat to the starting end to cook the water out of the lead before it gets hot enough to liquefy, then trickles into big pot with a bottom pour spigot to pour off the lead as it liquifies. The dross and stones/sand that get in are skimmed off or left floating - as long as you never run the pot all the way down you'll have a pretty decent lead alloy.

I should ad - I've only ever seen the dry washer used for gold mining - never built one, but have spoken with people who have and they say they're easy to make - they're just less efficient than wet sluices. They are supposed to be better than recirculating sluices. I have bulk reclaimed lead from berms using screens then refining it out using heated troughs. It works great, especially when your trough is heavy walled and wide/long enough that you can really apply heat to it and put large quantities of lead/rock through it at a time.

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## paulbrady

i was part of a crew that striped and replaced the backstops at the navy base at the end of the whangaparaoa peninsula ,we did the 300m, 100m range and also the pistol range ,this was about 10years ago , we must have got 2 1ton bags of lead gravel mix  out of that before we could dump the rest of the material in the back stops

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## Cordite

> I know it's US currency but the cheapest I can get primers are 4.5 cents each.
> 
> Already behind. 😆
> Still you can load 9 or 40 pretty cheap if shooting cast.
> 
> Powder coating the projectiles is interesting?
> 
> Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk



Re the powder coating, why not?  Looks cool, with the 9mm shells looking like my wife's lipstick.  Ballistically, it's really not that different to paper patching, and might similarly get round barrel lead fouling - and then presumably also less lead dust thrown out with the muzzle gases.

Studies done on kids growing up in 70's vs the 90's.  The former measurably less intelligent than the latter, linked to lead inhalation from traffic smog generated from leaded petrol (I remembered the study as I'm in the former group, still made it through uni though).   Bear in mind also that depleted uranium is bad news, not because of radiation but because it, like lead, is a heavy metal.  

Sensible upshot is, don't mess with lead, limit exposure -- but don't freak out either.

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## 300CALMAN

> i was part of a crew that striped and replaced the backstops at the navy base at the end of the whangaparaoa peninsula ,we did the 300m, 100m range and also the pistol range ,this was about 10years ago , we must have got 2 1ton bags of lead gravel mix  out of that before we could dump the rest of the material in the back stops


Yeah I remember being told about that. As long as the sediment is kept away from water courses soil back stops can be re-cycled. Adding a cover such as shredded rubber or geo-cloth helps also. The dust is also nasty.

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## 300CALMAN

> Re the powder coating, why not?  Looks cool, with the 9mm shells looking like my wife's lipstick.  Ballistically, it's really not that different to paper patching, and might similarly get round barrel lead fouling - and then presumably also less lead dust thrown out with the muzzle gases.
> 
> Studies done on kids growing up in 70's vs the 90's.  The former measurably less intelligent than the latter, linked to lead inhalation from traffic smog generated from leaded petrol (I remembered the study as I'm in the former group, still made it through uni though).   Bear in mind also that depleted uranium is bad news, not because of radiation but because it, like lead, is a heavy metal.  
> 
> Sensible upshot is, don't mess with lead, limit exposure -- but don't freak out either.


I am definitely keen to try out powder coating. I remember pulling a few 9 mm powder coated projectiles out of a back stop and noticing how intact they were. Most start to corrode but not the coated ones. Myst help with leading surely?

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## Cordite

> I am definitely keen to try out powder coating. I remember pulling a few 9 mm powder coated projectiles out of a back stop and noticing how intact they were. Most start to corrode but not the coated ones. Myst help with leading surely?


Must, since paper patching eliminates leading, and coppering (if there be such a word).

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