Thread: Help Offered – Range Contamination

Originally Posted by 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

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

Originally Posted by 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?

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 can only imagine how much lead is on the downstream side.

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.

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

Originally Posted by 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?

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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.

Originally Posted by 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

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.

Originally Posted by Cordite

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?

Originally Posted by 300CALMAN

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).