Telephone Cable Lead?

[Oregon Reb]

I have a source for telephone cable lead, does anyone know it's hardness and suitability for casting minnie balls? Do any of you have experience with it? It is still in it's insulation, is it hard to strip? I have not seen it yet, thought I would find something out about it first. Thanks.

[John Holland]

My experience is that it works very well, but stay away from the soldered joints. Use those for hard lead applications such as breech loaders.

John

[Michael T.]

It can be hard to strip, DONOT use a grinder or circular saw without a very good respirator. Best to use an old screwdriver and split it length-wise,beat on with a hammer. Chisel or an old hatchet will work too.Split a lot of lead jacket that way..

[tony 1st regt]

being a retired cable splicer for MA bell used a lot of telco lead. It will be soft enough to shoot but I think it has an alloy in it to make it more durable to the air pressure on the cables. It will most likely hardness test about a 6 or so, used it long before hardness testers were available, used the finger nail test back then. As stated keep the joints seperate if the cable has a splice sleeve on it, they were wiped with solder and are hard. There is a tool used to strip the cable it is called a chipping knife, if you know a local outside plant telco guy, they might loan it to you, it came in two sizes sm & lg. A hatchet would work well also, or you can make your own tool out of an old piece of car leaf spring. get a piece about 10" long , grind an edge about 2" up one side wrap some tape on the other end for a handle. you hit it with a hammer on the edge oppsite the edge, not horizontal like a meat clever but perpendicular all you want to do is split the lead, so you can pry it off. Enjoy

[efritz]

Long ago before I was shooting solid base bullets,I once ran into whole lot of it at a junk yard. Bought all he had. Took it home and melted down into my Lyman ingnot mold. That's where to my dimay I discovered it wasn't pure lead. When I turned the mold upside down they dropped out with a ping and a frosty look to them. Lead will be more of a thud and be real shiney. Lucky for me the junk yard took it all back at the same price I paid for it. Today, shooting several solid based bullets, I'd probably keep it. Good luck with geting it apart.

[Gary Van Kauwenbergh, 101]

I shot hundreds of pounds of minies made from cable sheathing back in the 1980s. You couldn't get anything softer than that or X-ray room lead back then, but I think things may have changed though when the price of lead rose.

Anyone who uses scrap lead is being penny wise and pound foolish if they don't use a lead hardness tester. They pay for themselves the first time you use scrap lead. Before I owned one, I cast over 1300 out of lead that passed the thumbnail test, but came out about BHN 6 on the tester. My minies were going through side-ways. I bought a tester and haven't had that problem since.

Another source for free lead is stained glass window shops. The last two I went to looked at me like I was nuts for offering to pay them for the scrap. They gave me over 200 lbs of lead, then thanked me for saving them a trip to the recycling center. Watch out for the joints, the solder has tin.

[Ken Eckard]

Had a friend who worked for the state highway admin.. dug up a lot of it .I used it , worked fine for minnies.
Ken Eckard
1st MD, Cav CSA

[RaiderANV]

That's all I use and have used since 1983. It is ALL pure soft lead. Problem with it ending up hard is if you melt the entire jacket. The soldering on the seam and end caps is really hard and will screw the whole batch.

I use a good heavy duty pair of hedge or limb loppers and just cut it open down both sides of the seam like a can opener. It goes real fast with the loppers. I cut the end caps off and throw the seams and caps in the hard lead pile to making smoothbore ammo.