How I turn a few bags of scrounged "range" lead back into bullets. I pick these up mostly off pistol ranges and other ranges where a lot of cast bullets are used. I try to avoid picking up anything with copper jackets but a few get through.
All dumped into my raw melt pot and set on the gas ring as hot as it will go.
When it gets close to being all melted down, I start stirring it up and begin scooping the crap out. Rocks, dirt, copper jackets and gas checks will all float on top. Any FMJ's are quickly dragged out. It is amazing how many you find even though they are banned on the ranges I pick.
At this point I will drop a piece of pure lead in, if it melts down straight away, I will scrap any bullets that have not melted down yet. It indicates to me that they may be of dubious composition and I don't want it in my mix.
That saucepan full of crap came out of about 55kg of range lead. It was about 10kg worth.
Next step is to start casting ingots for more manageability and use in my electric casting pots.
I use a small aluminium saucepan which has had a spout bent into one side.
This melt gave me 77+ pounds of ingots. I only use this in my lever-guns and get very good results with it.
I find that the more you melt down, ( i.e. the larger the batch ), the more consistency you will get.
I only use pure foundry supplied lead and tin for casting bullets to use in my BPCR's.