Old car batteries - how to retrieve the lead ????

BB,

The OHS brigade are probably formulating their replies, as we type...........lol.

Seem to recall doing this many years ago, and heated the lead on an old forge, and just kept adding the plates as it started to melt. A lot of those batteries loose their tops easily, with some help from a hammer.

As I'm older, but questionably wiser, I'd be using gloves now, and probably a quality face mask too, followed by some good hot water/soap hand washing.

Oops, that sounds like the safety lecture......page 1. Sorry about that, ha ha.

Bob.

Ah! Rough-a

I use to this as a kid in the goldfields of West Aust.

(1) take cell tops/caps/etc off and drain. We just used the empty paddock next door.

(2) Using a sledge hammer, carefully 'tap' around the bottom on the outer edge until it starts to split off.

(3) Once you have the outside case off, break up the lead plates the best way you can and discard the separators etc. and other non lead material.

(4) Now this will be the tricky bit for you - melting the battery leadthat you have just recovered.. We had a hand operated/blown Forge that was used to sharpen and temper mining picks, make ladder hooks and heaps of other mining stuff.

I had a small crucible with a long handle on it and just put it in the forge, packed it with coke around the outside and got on the blower winder handle which was my job when the adults were doing the aforementioned pick sharpening etc) until the crucible was glowing red and then started feeding the lead in.

Did I/we use protective gloves - Nup! not available. Did we think of or worry about fumes etc - Nup! Never heard of such stuff. Anyway the wind used to carry all that stuff away to share with the neighbours and fauna.

(5) The lead used to melt very quickly and all the dross/crap floated to the top and was scooped off prior to pouring.

(6) Left over battery cases were tossed on the rubbish heap in the paddock along side the house which was fired up approx once a month.

I used to get the best of the best of fires going that some times lasted all day, especially if I could round up some tyres to chuck on and then tip all the old sump oil from the machinery oil changes over the top of it all.

The good old days.

These days dude, just take your battery down to the local disposal site (my council runs one) pay your disposal fee and go off to K-mart or wherever and buy what you want, as the time, effort and money that you will waste complying with current Oooo! Oooo! brigade regulations recycling you own batteries into whatever, will demoralise, bankrupt and destroy whatever faith you have left in humanity.

Regards

DD

PS

I do miss those fires, especially on washing day.

I opened up a couple of lead acid types last year (not to make sinkers though) and found an angle grinder was next to useless. An ordinary old wood cutting hand saw was the best. There is some heavy lead under the top of the case then some thin strips going down to the suspended plates. After draining the acid and flushing with water, you measure down from the top of the case to the top of the plates. Mark the distance on the outside of the case then lay it on its side and cut through a few millimetres above your mark. All you are doing is cutting through thin plastic and the thin lead suspension strips. A wood saw will do that easily.

I used a large hand held propane burner like thishttp://www.bestbuytoday.com/tiger-torch/# to melt it although there are plenty of other things that would do it. I blanked of one end of a scrap piece of 30 mm x 3.2 mm wall pipe about 150 mm long then welded about half a metre of 20 mm square tube to the side of it like a long handle. I held the end of the tube in a vice then heated the pipe and dropped pieces of lead into it. There was so much heat in the pipe when it was full of molten lead, I had all the time in the world to pour it out before it started to solidify.

No John, lead doesn't kill kids. It does cause learning disabilities and reduces ability to control temper. Cheers for the good old days when no one cared one way or another.

Yes I use to close spilt shot sinkers with my teeth, no wonder I am missing a few brain cells theses days. Just because we did it does not make it right.
Cheers Pete

if lead musket balls were found on the Batavia wreck after 400 yrs, I cant see them leaching out too much poison in the ocean.
In different forms maybe but not solid.

Most responsible fishers are moving away from lead, dont forget people in fresh water systems use it for drinking. I do see it as more of a problem in the fresh. Lead is quite and insidous metal and the effects build up over many years.
Cheers Pete

hi
last time we were in exmouth we went to the beaches west of the light house and on low tide you can with the use of a snorkle float around in the shallow water and collect more sinkers and fishing rigs and a lot of it is brand new off the bottom than you will ever use in a life time or be able to bring home in your vehicle
it is several years since i was up there
april 2000 i think it was
and i am still using what i collected
my son and i had to make frequent trips back to the beach to empty the small dive bag as it very quickly got too heavy with lead and rigs
watching some of the fishermen and from my own experiences sometimes you lose rig every throw or every couple of throws when it gets
snagged on the rough bottom up there most of the stuff we collcted was 40 -100m from the shore so if your up that way go for it we carried a small pair of snips to discard any rusty or unwanted line etc but there were massive amounts on the ocean floor in some of the more popular fishing spots
yes a different type of fishing one could say !
cheers

I doubt it does much. Musket balls found on the Batavia wreck were there for 400 years and still intact.

Anzac veterans lived their whole lives with lead slugs in their bodies.
In other forms and ingestion-skin, lungs it is a big problem of course