Lead Paint on vintage Machine Tools

A little trivia.
During the Civil War soldiers in the South didn't eat as well as their Yankee brethren.
The balls (bullets) are made of lead. It has a slight sweet taste, they would suck on them to stave off hunger.
The pic below is peeling lead paint off an old army barracks. It's our back shop ceiling covering.
This white paint clearly shows the shiny lead backing.
 

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Run out of sweetener for your coffee? No problem just dump some lead minnyballs in your cup
 
vtcnc said:
I've always thought that dealing with lead paint (once the hazards were understood) was simply a matter of common sense.

On the other hand, if it were common sense, it would be more common.
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Very well said, Sir. We often forget that half the population is of below average intelligence.. Common sense isn't so common. . .

.
 
I think of all those days in my youth when I used to wash cat parts with leaded gasoline. Tetraethylead is a highly dissociated organic lead compound which is readily absorbed through the skin. I had some analytical tests for lead back in the late sixties as a possible3 cause for numness experience in my arms which came back negative. However, the sensitivity of those tests was several orders of magnitude less than current technology.
 
My wife is an environmental scientist, and studied, and wrote much of the work on the effects of lead paint on children for the NIH, and it affects a lot more kids than you would think, and the results are irreversible, and not pretty. Certainly not something someone would wish on any child. Don't work with it much now, but when I was a teen I did a fair amount lead and oakum joints on cast iron. Always enjoyed the process, just something intriguing about wacthing molten metal flowing. Mike
 
FOMOGO said:
My wife is an environmental scientist, and studied, and wrote much of the work on the effects of lead paint on children for the NIH, and it affects a lot more kids than you would think, and the results are irreversible, and not pretty. Certainly not something someone would wish on any child. Don't work with it much now, but when I was a teen I did a fair amount lead and oakum joints on cast iron. Always enjoyed the process, just something intriguing about wacthing molten metal flowing. Mike
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Not much lead and oakum work these days anywhere. Around me at least. I keep both at my shop for the very rare repair that we run across.
 
Probably not much of it anywhere now. Mostly plastic, even in third world countries. Pretty common 55 yrs ago when I was doing it, working for my dad. Mike
 
We did a wiped lead joint at work once — now that was interesting. Just for show though.
 
I wonder what pipe large commercial union projects use in New York/ Chicago areas.
 
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