What's new
What's new

source for red lead

You've run out. What a shame. I worked in the stuff for many years. By noon I'd have it all over my hands and half way up to my elbows. I'm only curious as to what sort of interesting life I will have in old age. Why don't you contact Dapra and find some more modern metal marking solutions? What has happend to me is in the past. Do not let it happen to you.
 
traytopjohnny,
A town closeby had a battery recycling plant for 75 years. Lead in the air, drinking water, etc. I read the kids there have health problems much higher than Nat. average. Cleanup of plant site cost multiple millions of dollars. Hopefully your handling the lead isn't as bad as drinking the stuff from birth like these kids. Somebodys probably studied your type exposure to it, but I dont know where. I spent two days working in that plant as a contractor and asked if the air was safe. The Maint. Mgr said "Hadnt killed me yet".
 
I remember in May of '77 I started at Milacron. My first project to rebuild was a Fellows gear shaper. We rebuilt it mechanicaly and then set out to align it. Another fellow and I were scraping on the cross rail. (Mind you at this point I am 27 and think in my mind this is totaly laim. Don't they have machines to do this?) I have heard of lead poisoning and go to the safety department and ask if there is anything I need to be concerned about. The personell man there tells me all I need to worry about is when the red lead is in the powdery form. Once I have it mixed with oil and naptha it is now a paste and no longer air borne. I went back to my department and my foreman was waiting for me and was very angry. He told me to never go to the safety department without first contacting him. This was no more than one minute from leaving the safety department. News travels fast. Twenty years later all red lead was taken out. All babbits were taken out. All lead vise jaws were taken out and all pound pads. Lead is bad. So they tell us twenty years later. Hah! Hah!, Jokes on us.
 
I've used red lead, white lead, and poured lead
round balls for shooting. I know there is a modern
substitute for white lead as used in lubricating
centers, but I haven't seen anything on red lead
powder. The white lead substitute is "EEZ" brand "Instead-a-Led" by Mullen Circle Brand out of Chicago, Illinois.
As with any potentially hazardous material, how you handle it can make all the difference, and all the histrionics the safety fanatics go through doesn't necessarily mean the stuff has to be banished from the face of the earth as deadly poison. Take proper precautions, keep your hands
away from your face, wash after using the stuff and chances are you will not lose any IQ points.
Of course, if you are going to sprinkle the powdered form around like talcum, roll in it, breath it, and eat Twinkies with your hands covered in it, that's not an industrial accident, it's natural selection at work. -JM
 
Snowman, yes , used just like Prussian blue. Lot of hands like it better, since soft metal, kinda acts like a cushion when spotting. My lead is more of a bright orange, is this the norm? Getting the right consistancy is the trick, so Prussian blue is easier
for the novice and less dangerous.
 
We used to put prussian blue on the master and red lead on the piece we were going to cut. The blue would transfer to the dull shean of the red lead and you could see better than if you were to try to cut bare metal. If you are going to cut one or two occasional projects there is not to much danger. Now if you are scraping five days a week with all the over time you can stand sometimes against your will and you do this for years and years it is different. As you cut the lead falls on the floor. You walk in it. Your hands become permeated ine it. It gets under your nails. All of you tools are covered. When you sweep the broom becomes permeated in the stuff. Everything you touch including table tops becomes coated. After a few hours the stuff is nearly half way up to your elbows. Oh, If your cutting a gib or a little crosslide yuor ok bit what about a Hydrotell or a #5 Cincinnati Dual power. Your going to have every slide of that piece of equiptment apart many times. Your going to crawl around on it and now you take it home and wash your clothes in your home laundry. Maybe the stuff is not hazzardous. I do know one thing, OSHA took it away. It went quick. We were told to turn it in and it was never to be seen again.
 
TTJohny,

If you'd had acute lead poisoning, you'd known about it years ago. However, chronic lead toxicity is another matter.

I've been target shooting at the Cincinnati Revolver Club for about ten years now and we do our best to mitigate lead at the range. (I'm not a doctor or any kind of health professional, though I am married to a dietitian, which makes me less than qualified :^) Signs of chronic lead toxicity include; Nervous System Fatigue, apathy, irritability, insomnia to coma; Blood Anemia or jaundice; Kidneys, renal failure; Digestive tract, vague G-I problems, colic; Reproductive system, decreased libido, infertility; Muscles and Joints, aches and pains particularly in back and shoulders, gout.

Absorption through skin only occurs when in an organic form. Most absorption is through ingestion and breathing. Ways to mitigate it include donating blood, eating foods high in iron and Vit. C.(the lead competes with iron for sites on the hemoglobin)

Simple hygene goes a long way to keeping it out of your body. A simple blood test will tell a lot at your (whenever) annual physical. When I had mine checked last, I'd done a lot of work at the range that summer. The biggest chalenge at the doctors office was figuring out which vial to use as the pediatrician was out that day. I wore a respirator during anything that had a chance of blowing up dust, washed my hands and face before leaving the range. IIRC it tested at 20-24 parts per whatever liter of blood. Just under the level that means "Be Careful! Danger ahead". The standards are going lower as time goes on, lead levels in the population were much higher before tetra-ethyl lead was banned from gasoline.

Basically, if you're concerned that you have a persistent, chronic lead level, it's easy to check, and it's not likely something to show up years later. Chelation therapy is something that's done by a Dr., they run your blood through enzyemes that have an affinity for the Pb. There's plenty of info on lead out there, I've got some pdf files relating to lead at shooting ranges, if you're intersted.
 
I was given most of a 25 lb. pail. They were glad to be rid of it and asked that they not be identified. I have never hit on the proper way to mix it or apply it, even after several re-reads of Connelly's instructions in MTR. It mostly just sits there in the pail.

If anyone needs some, come on by, and you will get to sign my hold harmless document.

John
 
I use Dykem Hi-spot (not that I claim any expertise in scraping):

Dykem Hi-spot

This stuff is blue and does not dry out like prussian blue. You can roll it very thin - on a surface plate, angle plate, etc. - with a brayer (you can get these at most art supply stores).

I would stay away from lead unless you have a very good reason.

Cheers,
Bob Welland
 
The way we used to mix it was to get a shallow can such as a tuna can or what ever you wanted. We would mix it in a larger vessle just for convienence. You add less powder than you want to end up with and add just about any kind of oil and start mixing it. Also we would add naptha in order to help mix it. This would eventually evaporate. It was easier to mix it a little more soupy than you would want to end up with then add more powder till you had the consistancy you were after. This would be a cake. Thicker than wax shoe polish. When we used it we would have two oil cans. One with oil and one with naptha. You give the can a squirt of oil and another of naptha and you would daube at it with a felt block. You would cover the piece you were about to cut with a coat that was thicker than what you needed. Then with a red shop towel you would wipe nearly all of it off. Then we would go over everything with a bristle brush so as to get rid of any debris. There is nothing more horrible to here than a distinct scratching noise from a piece of grit stuck between two newly finished pieces of iron considering there is know oil present. Just the marking dies. If you would stare straight down at the surface you could hardly see it. From an angle you could see it a little more. Mainly you wanted to knock off the shine. We also used something we called Indian red. The red lead was bright orange. The Inian was purpleish red. It may have been iron oxide. I'm not sure. We would put this on what we were not about to cut. On the master. The material in our pots was always to dry to use and it was conatantly neccessary to add just a bit of oil and just a bit of naptha.
 
John,

I know this is a super old post but I just came across it in my pursuit of red lead for scraping. I'm in Houston too and would love to get any of it that you still have or don't want. Can you text me me if you see this post? 2818811007.

Thanks,
Kevin
 
Private Message sent

John,

I know this is a super old post but I just came across it in my pursuit of red lead for scraping. I'm in Houston too and would love to get any of it that you still have or don't want. Can you text me me if you see this post? 2818811007.

Thanks,
Kevin
 








 
Back
Top