casting lead idea

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casting lead idea

Post by pete1 » 28 Jan 2017, 3:14 pm

So anyone ever tried sourcing lead from old car batteries, heaps of people struggle to get rid of them.
Pull all the plates out and you would have a tonne of lead, Would it work?
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Re: casting lead idea

Post by bladeracer » 28 Jan 2017, 4:07 pm

pete1 wrote:So anyone ever tried sourcing lead from old car batteries, heaps of people struggle to get rid of them.
Pull all the plates out and you would have a tonne of lead, Would it work?



I haven't tried it myself, but I believe there's bugger all usable lead in modern batteries.
People I've talked to that have tried just ended up breaking the terminals off and that's all.
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Re: casting lead idea

Post by Oldbloke » 28 Jan 2017, 4:09 pm

Yep, did that years ago. BUT the sulfuric acid is a prick to deal with.
Glasses, rubber gloves, apron. Lots of water to dilute the acid.
Aldo very messy.
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Re: casting lead idea

Post by Bushie » 28 Jan 2017, 4:36 pm

Should work just fine, but there will most likely be a lot of impurities in the melt cause of the corrosion from the lead plates, and just like oldbloke said the sulfuric acid is a pain so you'd have to be careful there, probably have to melt cast and re-melt and re-cast cause of the impurities, I'm opinion it seems like it would be a lot of dicking around for probably not that much lead.
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Re: casting lead idea

Post by Noisydad » 28 Jan 2017, 6:22 pm

Bushie is right. There are way easier sources of lead.
There's still a few of Wile. E Coyote's ideas that I haven't tried yet.
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Re: casting lead idea

Post by Cryptic » 28 Jan 2017, 7:41 pm

One of our jobsites is a car battery manufacturer. Been asking if I could get lead bars off them to no avail lol. Wouldn't be much in the mesh plates in em to recoup from watching the finishing lines on them.
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Re: casting lead idea

Post by Lorgar » 02 Mar 2017, 1:41 pm

Call around a few scrap metal places mate.

For the sake of a few bucks you'll get as much as you want and make life a whole lot easier.
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Re: casting lead idea

Post by reloader762 » 04 Mar 2017, 9:26 pm

Personally I would stay away for using lead from car batteries as you can get into all kinds of toxic even deadly substances when melting it down. Take the old batteries to the recycle center or scrap yard and exchange them for usable lead.

The warnings about smelting automotive batteries to recover the lead they contain needs a bit of explanation. Doing so really does have the potential to harm or even kill you and here is why. Maintenance free/low maintenance batteries use calcium metal-doped lead to catalyze the hydrogen gas generated from water electrolysis back into water. That is what makes the batteries low maintenance or maintenance free, you don't need to add water to the cells as often like in the old days. When the battery lead is melted down there is enough sulfuric acid from residual electrolyte trapped in the lead dioxide and lead framework of the battery plates to react with the small amount of calcium metal in the lead alloy. Normally when sulfuric acid (or water) gets in contact with calcium metal it undergoes a rather vigorous reaction that generates hydrogen gas. In and of itself this is no big deal, hydrogen is a simple non-toxic asphyxiant that is also flammable. But the lead alloy used in batteries also contains a bit of antimony and even arsenic to help harden and strengthen the lead to withstand the vibration and general knocking-about batteries have to withstand in order to survive normal automotive use. When hydrogen comes in contact with arsenic and antimony, or compounds of these two elements, the hydrogen reacts to form ammonia analogues called arsine and stibine, AsH3 and SbH3. Both of these are heavy gases and both have the similar characteristic odors of rotting fish. In World War One the Germans experimented with these, along with phosphine, another rotting-fish-smelling gaseous ammonia analogue with formula PH3, as war gases. As such they were highly effective since they are deadly in amounts too small to easily detect. In even smaller amounts that are too small to immediately kill they cause rather painful lung damage that often eventually leads to emphysema and lung cancer.
So, leave smelting car batteries or using lead smelted from them to professional recyclers. Many folks including myself have successfully smelted batteries and lived to tell about it, but the risk is just too great to mess with the stuff.
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Re: casting lead idea

Post by Tils » 06 Mar 2017, 5:11 pm

Take a trip down to your local tyre joint and try to buy or beg the old wheel weights off them.
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