I'm done with wheelweights

Just finished up my last two five gallon buckets of wheelweights. I spent a few hours a day over three days sorting the steel and zinc weights from the lead. About 25% were zinc or steel. Took a little over three hours to to smelt them down and pour into ingots, about 200 pounds. I miss the days of all lead weights at 5 cents a pound (what I paid for my very first bucket full). After this I'm seeking other sources for lead.

Wheel weights have been an iffy proposition for some years now. Lots of sources for lead on ebay but prices tend to be painful...

Hi,

Five cents a pound? Outrageous! Guy at the local tire shop gave 'em away... But those days are gone, as are the lead weights themselves. So I've tried buying commercial lead a couple of ways.

Rotometals sells a hardball alloy, at rather dear prices (if memory serves, my last batch ran somewhere over $2/lb, and that's been several years ago.) But it's clean and already melted into ingots, so I guess we're paying for something there. For about half their price, reclaimed lead shot from trap and skeet ranges is a hair over $1/lb at my supplier of shotshell components. It's about the same alloy as hardball (it might be a tiny bit softer, as clay target shooters are using more of the less expensive target shell varieties, which use a lesser grade of shot than the premium varieties), and is all ready to load in shotshells. Which means it's been cleaned, tumbled to round it out a little, and graphited (to pour well thru the loading tubes.) The graphite makes for a lot of dross to skim off the melting pot, and it takes a bit hotter pot than wheelweights to get good fill out of the mold without wrinkles, but otherwise it'll do. I think I'll try Missouri Bullets' hardball alloy next. It's not a giveaway, but better than Rotometals on price last I looked.

Rick C

I got in on some of the last "good" wheel weights (200-300 #) and then quit casting. Also have a couple hundred pounds of older lino-type. It doesn't spoil and one day may be a life saver.

just a wild a-s thought....

I wonder what will be done with the MEGA-tons of lead that was used in the nuclear power plants that are scheduled to be retired due to all the wind and solar.

My father had a print shop, stock up on lino type when he sold out and retired!
Still have hundreds of pounds. Also makes decent sinkers for deep sea fishing

My father too was a printer. Wish I had the buckets of Linotype he had back then! He just recycled it.
gramps

Doesn't matter of they are or not-although most isotopes are either not radioactive or are weak beta emitters (largely harmless). But it's that evil lead so it will be hauled off and expensively stored with other 'harmfull' stuff!

Check your local scrap yard(s). Many sell scrap lead, and some have the ability to test it to verify the alloy.

"I wonder what will be done with the MEGA-tons of lead that was used in the nuclear power plants that are scheduled to be retired due to all the wind and solar."

Glow-in-the-dark bullets, no tracer compound needed.

I don't melt WW in my casting pot, have an old cast iron plumbers pot for that. Bought a good temp gauge & anything that doesn't melt @ 740 or 50 gets thrown out. Of course if I happen to see/feel a suspect weight as I'm getting them out of the bucket I throw it out, otherwise I let temperature do my sorting. About a 100 deg. between lead & zinc.

JFB said:

just a wild a-s thought....

I wonder what will be done with the MEGA-tons of lead that was used in the nuclear power plants that are scheduled to be retired due to all the wind and solar.

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I would guess it is much like X-ray lead. Everybody I know that has tried it has sworn off it. There's just something "off" about it.

Goldstar225 said:

After this I'm seeking other sources for lead.

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Don't plumbers remove a lot of lead pipe? I have some old lead pipe in my garage for sinkers and such. A couple of phone calls to some plumbing shops might help you find another source after you cast the 200 lbs you have in ingots. I really can't imagine that much casting. :roll: :roll:

I doubt there is much lead pipe still out there. For local supplies I would imagine a local scrap metal place would be your best bet. Be prepared to test for hardness and be willing to add alloy materials to adjust accordingly. Otherwise just pony up the bucks and get the right alloy from a source that sells a specific hardness alloy.

I think the days of free, or nearly free lead are pretty much over, unless you happen to be very lucky.

I don't melt WW in my casting pot, have an old cast iron plumbers pot for that. Bought a good temp gauge & anything that doesn't melt @ 740 or 50 gets thrown out. Of course if I happen to see/feel a suspect weight as I'm getting them out of the bucket I throw it out, otherwise I let temperature do my sorting. About a 100 deg. between lead & zinc.

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Same for me...works great...but I do sort my stick on pure lead ones prior for use where a PB/WW alloy is useful. Rod

I have about ten 5 gal. buckets of wheel weights to smelt and my casting pard brought me a 3400 pound lead weight off a junked out fork lift to smelt as well.

I bought a bunch of plumbing lead scraps 400# as well.

We figure to use powder coating to stretch out the harder WW lead and throw as much soft lead as long as we can.

Buying the metals to stiffen the soft lead is an option. Also trading our soft lead to a muzzle loader caster for wheel weight lead is on the pile of ideas as well.

Three44s

Check with boat yards. Many sailboats use a keel made of a hard lead and antimony blend. Find a junk boat and you will have 600-2000 pounds. Cut off what you want and junk the rest. Florida is full of them from all the hurricanes. I know this because I both shoot and sailing worked in boat yards for many years

If your sorting resulted in only 25% scrap then your bucket of weights is either five years old or someone pre-sorted it.

I am an automotive technician and therefore recycle all of our weights and find less than half of the weights in the trash bucket are lead. This may be because most of the weights we remove are from new cars that have never had the tires balanced post assembly.

I started casting a few years ago and back then the finished smelted net weight of usable alloy was greater than 2/3 of the original unsorted and clip-laden gross weight. If I took home 100 lbs of unsorted wheel weights I would end up with 70 pounds of alloy. Now 100 pounds of gross weight will yield 30 pounds of alloy.

Dan in MI said:

I would guess it is much like X-ray lead. Everybody I know that has tried it has sworn off it. There's just something "off" about it.

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I've salvaged a fair amount of xray lead and used it, mostly for muzzleloader bullets, but have mixed it with LT. It works fine.

The radioactive glow helps me track the bullet to its target. :mrgreen:

Know anyone in the telephone co or power co??? A lot of old tel and power cables were lead covered! a few cases of beer might get you a lot of lead!