I was wanting to know if it is possible to use battery lead for bullet casting. I'm new to casting and haven't read anything on this subject any info would be great Thanks

Modern batteries have calcium and cadmium alloyed into the plates. Neither is good for bullet making and cadmium is toxic. It's definitely a bad idea.

Bye
Jack

Battery lead contains Ca (calcium), Cd (cadmium), Sr (strontium), Cu (copper) and a variety of other trace elements. Some are toxic and most will cause casting problems and if you intend to use the bullets for hunting, they will be brittle and fragment.

Some say that the terminals are soft pure lead, this is incorrect information, they are in fact soft because they are swaged, not cast - most all lead alloys "work soften" making them appear to be soft alloy yet when melted and cast, they are hard and brittle.

In addition to the alloying elements, you also have sulfuric acid contamination to deal with, as it cooks off it will turn to vapor and recondense in your nasal passages and lungs effectively burning the tissues and going directly into your body through the open wounds.

Many people will go lead hunting in salvage yards, this is fine and dandy but keep in mind that you never know where the lead came from or what it was used for. I have seen lead vats and piping come into scrap yards that were used for acid and caustic chemical handling. Sometimes you can pick-up on the tell-tale odor and sometimes you can't. If you're picking salvage lead, always smelt it outdoors and keep your face out of the fumes - it's also a good idea to have some sort of blast shield around the top of the smelting pot because the first time you witness the release of liquid trapped inside a piece of lead as it hits the already melted lead...you'll understand very clearly why I say this! I had it happen in my large pot, a very small amount of trapped liquid blew about 30 pounds of melt out of the pot and my ears were ringing for several hours from the noise. The blast shield worked, it directed all the melt away from me and anything important but did it make a mess!

Another thing is, check every piece of lead before you put it into the pot to make sure you don't throw a piece of zinc in, even a small amount is enough to ruin the entire pot of melt. If you're looking for soft lead, roof flashings and stick-on wheel weights are the most common forms. Wire sheathing may or may not be soft, the only way to tell is to test it after casting it into ingots. Keep all like lead in separate ingots, in other words if you come up with 50# of WW (wheel weight) and 50# roof flashing, 30# of pipe and 40# of unknown, cast them by themselves and clearly mark the ingots as to what they are. This will also help you to avoid destroying a whole batch of lead via contamination.

I want to say thanks for all the help this is a whole new part to reloading I have never done before. I think I will stick to WW. It's nice to know there are still people out there willing to help others. Thanks again.