As I slowly worked my way through the pile of spent bullet rounds we dug out of the rifle/pistol range berms I continuously saved the copper jackets after we melted the lead out. And by the end of a few months I found I had four huge planter boxes filled with copper jackets...to the tune of about 300lbs, now this is the time when commodities like copper were going through the roof...copper thieves were stealing anything copper....including your plumbing and air conditioner parts. So since I had a bunch of copper I decided that I would load it all up in the truck and take it down to the recycling yard early on a Saturday morning...I could smell the green $$$$$....boy, I was in for a big let down.
After I got to the recycling yard, I got in line with all the scrappers, I finally made it up to the yard gate checker. The young fellow took one look at the planters full of bullet casings and said 'Those look like bullets'....duh...I said'thats exactly what they are but all the lead is smelted out leaving the gilding metal jacketing. No good....'we don't take bullets' was my reply from the yard guy. I got the yard managers name and phone number and when I got back home I called him up and yep, it was true, the yard does not take in anything firearm related. I guess they are afraid of misspent rounds....not likely as I had already heated the metals up over 700 degrees but they were not buying it. So I now have 300 plus pounds of scrap copper I can't do anything with, unless I can change it to a material (i.e. an ingot?) that will be acceptable. My lead pot and turkey burner can not achieve the temps I will need to melt the copper/gild metal bullet jackets so I will move on to the next phase of furnace and smelting drama.
I wanted to build a setup to melt out the copper gilding bullet casings and make them into ingots which are 'Not Bullets' so I found a small place in the back yard where I could build a fireplace base and set about getting materials together. I surfed the net a little bit and read a few articles by other home metal folks and hit the jackpot with a forum called BackyardMetalCasting.com. This site was set up by a knowledgable and sharing fellow named Lionel. If you want to get additional information or find a group of like minded folks I suggest you check them out!! Its Free.
OK...now some folks who have been involved with a backyard foundry and/or are members of the BYMC forums..you're going to have a few chuckles as you read this story...there is lots of stuff I should have done differently but its a story of the journey and perhaps if I detail all the shortfalls and errors perhaps I may spare some other aspiring foundry person...so read on.....................
Anyways I located a nice safe spot for the furnace out back. Now I always seem to overbuild, so to start out I made a 1x4 wooden frame with the plan of building a containment for the sand, dross and other stuff and prevent it from just leaching into the soil.
I laid some old pieces of plywood into the wood frame and then laid a layer of plastic sheeting which I ran up over the edges of the 1x4 pine frame, makes sort of a bathtub. Into this I mixed up a bunch of old play sand I had with a couple bags of old semi rotten Quikcrete and maybe a little dirt, added a bit of water and shovelled it into the wooden frame. I used the end of the rake to tamp the sand/cement mix into the frame. I made the sand base about 4 inches deep.
The little Toyota truck was pressed into delivery service to bring home the cinder blocks, fillers and firebricks.
