More zinc showing up. Sigh.

[jonk]

The guy I usually get my weights from (local owner of 5 tire stores- my payment to him is to cast and lube him about 500 bullets a year for loading his .38 special) just recently gave me a bucket.

In the past, I had found maybe 1-2 zinc ones per 5 gallon bucket. Easy to spot, so long as you watch your melt carefully and grab them with a spoon or tongs before they overheat and melt themselves.

Well in this bucket, just in the first 20 pounds that I melted down this last week, I found 10 zinc weights.

Sigh.

Course, I won't toss 'em. I have a downrigger mold that I can use them in.

[timkelley]

Had some work done on the front end of Mom's Envoy last week and was talking with the shop owner. He says most weights he sees now are steel, because of the winter/summer tire change around here. Much of his business is from repeat customers and so the weights he sees in the fall are the ones he put on in the spring.

[chris in va]

Yup, save them. We'll all be casting zinc before long. Ironically pennies are mostly zinc, so maybe we should just use those!

[captain-03]

Steel is starting to make a real dent in my recent finds!!

[songdog53]

Last 5 gallpn bucket had about 25 Zinc weights in it. Way too many. But considering price for weights isn't bad which was zero dollars.

[wcp4570]

I have found allot of steel in my recent purchase of wheel weights. I bought 3 buckets that are about 2 gallons each and just looking 3 or 4 inches down in each and have found about 40 iron weights in the 3 buckets. The iron weights are marked with Fe on the face under the clip and are easy to spot. Have not smelted any from this newest batch yet. As for as zinc goes, I have not found any marked Zn but have found some that is very hard when scratched with the point of a knife blade. I'm thinking the hard weights are zinc.

I've been casting since the early 70's and this is a first for me. Looks like what has been said here about WW's is coming true fast.

wcp

[dunkel]

Finally got a hook up at a tire shop. Asked him about weights and he said it's all going to be steel. He said he'll pull the one or two lead weights he finds and let me know when he has a decent haul. Might take a while.

So yeah, let's start looking at zinc, I guess.

[leadman]

A pair of side cutter easily identifies the zinc as they barely scratch them. There are some lead weights that are harder so these could be a mix of lead and zinc.
A metal recycler here in Az told me awhile ago that he sells all his wheelweights to China and India and they don't care what the alloy is. So guess what is coming back to us??