There are many different resources added to Fallout 76 and with all that crafting you’re going to be doing, you will need a steady stream of different resources. With lead in Fallout 76, you can use it to give your armor some decent radiation resistance, which will be very handy out in the wasteland.
The best and most common way of getting lead in Fallout 76 is to strip it from a variety of junk items found out and around the game world. Some of the most common items that lead can be smelted from are very common, and can be found all over the map. Once you have any of these items, you do need to break them down at either an armor workbench, a chemistry station, a power armor station, the tinker’s workbench, or a weapons workbench.
These items include bullet casings, aluminum cans, paint, pencils, and many other items. Each of these contains a variety of different metals and other raw resources that can be processed, including lead. As for where to look for these items, you can find them pretty much anywhere. Any factory or similar facility is a good place to start looking for lead-bearing materials.
There is one other place to look for this resource, and that is the naturally occurring lead deposits scattered around the game world. These veins are all over the place, and the amount of lead they yield will vary each time they spawn.
And as with farming any item in this game, you would be wise to camp out near some of these spawns so you can do a resource run. Plop down your C.A.M.P. and make a big loop to the lead deposits in your area. Make note of the other recurring spawns in that area too, that way you can gather more than just one resource each time.
Check the map below, the blue areas denote the approximate spawn locations of the lead deposits.