Cleaning Wheel Weights Before Smelting

[rugerglocker]

Hi there,
New to casting, and I have some dirty WWs to smelt into ingots. I have seen a few youtube videos where people washed their WWs with soapy water etc. prior to smelting. I have also read that others don't bother with cleaning because the oil/grease/grime/dirt/grit act as a sort of flux?

Should I wash em?

I would like to avoid the problem of having to deal with and dispose of a bunch of "lead water" if I don't need to.

Sorry if this has been covered I searched "clean/cleaning wheel weights" and came up with a bunch of irrelevant threads. Thanks.

Also how do you post a Poll? I looked but didn't see the option, I'm probably just blind.

[peerlesscowboy]

I don't bother washing/cleaning the weights before smelting and frankly it never occurred to me to do so. All the oil/grease/grime/dirt/grit will either burn off or float to the top along with the clips when you melt the weights, just skim it off the molten alloy. I do pick out any stuff like broke off rubber valve stems before they go in the pot and make a mess.

John C. Saubak

[Hickory]

As peerlesscowboy said, don't bother.
What you need to do is FLUX-FLUX-FLUX.

[rugerglocker]

Cool. Nice to not have to mess with that.
Thanks for the super fast replies.

[DeanWinchester]

I have different smelting pots. The first one is SO nasty, I don't bother fluxing it, I just skim it good and pour into the second pot/ using the 2nd pot as a ingot mold. When done smelting the nasty stuff, I remelt in a clean pot and flux flux flux!!! Then cast my ingots for later use. It may be too much labor, but I do not get surprise visitors in the form of specks and çrap that can find their way into a clean ingot.

[jsizemore]

600-700 degrees tends to take care of most mess. Flux and stir and scrap the sides and bottom of your smelting pot and when you think you've done it enough, do it one more time till absolutely nothing comes to the surface the last time and the next to the last time your flux and stir and scrape. All this work pays off when you start to cast.

[Will]

If you should wash them dont drop them into molten lead. put them into a cold pot and heat them up. Water can be traped in them. I don't even drop them in to hot metal if I haven't washed them; you never know where they may have been.

I never clean them just as the above have said.

[HangFireW8]

I just sort out the paper and valve stems to cut down on the smoke, if I see any weights with rivets I yank them (either iron, harmless, or zinc). Then smelt keeping the temps down, skim off the lug nuts, zincs, and the rest.

Then, as Hickory said, flux, flux, flux. Some folks hate Marvelux for its rust promoting ability in the casting pot, but I think the smelting pot is where it belongs.

-HF

[dolang1]

I washed some wheel weights in a 5 gal. bucket with a car wash power washer. I spread them on my driveway to dry. I shoveled them into the pot until I found a piece of foam that didn't dry. About 10 minutes walking back. I don't wash them anymore. Later Don

[WILCO]

I never wash them. Just pickout the garbage and smelt them down. Lots of fluxing too.

[bbs70]

It doesn't take much moisture to make a lead pot blow hot lead all over you and everything else.
I never wash mine for this reason, I've seen what damage can be done with a very little bit of moisture.

I did have a 3 gal bucket of ww that had been outside and had been sprinkled on.
Spread them out in the garage to let them dry out (in July) for 5 days.
They still popped and hissed when I put them in with some melted lead.

Tends to make one gun shy.

[garym1a2]

Gease makes a flux, all the trash floats or burns off. water is too dangeous to have near the lead.

[XWrench3]

I do not wash them. Way to much work for no (my opinion) good reason. Anything that will burn contains carbon, which will help flux. Anything that will not, will float to the top where you are going to scrape it off anyway. Try to get as much junk out before you make ingots to put in your pot. The less junk in your pot, the cleaner the alloy to actually cast with. When i first started, i had to dump the alloy from my pot a few times and scrape it out, then wire brush it because i was not thinking, and inexperienced a couple of times of that will set it into your head pretty good. I flux twice with parafin, and sawdust (wax,dust,wax,dust), to try to get the smelt as clean as i can. I also watch the last few scoops from the pot, where i am scraping the last bits out. If it comes out nasty, i just pitch it. To little lead to get to crazy about. Fwiw, i have also tried spraying the inside of the (casting) pot with spray on mold release. It does make it easier to clean out, but it also scrapes off quite easily also.

[*Paladin*]

No washing here, and my last batch of WW's were NASTY! I'm talking grease covered, gritty, etc.
And in the end, just a pile of purty ingots. I just flux and skim twice, then pour...

[gwilliams2]

Throw them right in the pot, what you don't need will float or burn...

[rugerglocker]

Thanks for all the replies. I have found this forum and its members to be the most helpful around.

[chris in va]

I'll be the one going against the grain.

My local recycler sells wheelweights. They had a bucket of them sitting out front, and I kid you not...they were dug up out of the mud. Looked like someone buried them 20 years ago.

I tried smelting as-is at first, but discovered dirt is heavier than lead (somehow). There was a nice layer of it in the bottom of my pot, and no amount of fluxing got it out.

It had to be washed off, no choice. I discovered if the weights are piled up in my little skillet, the water steams off first before they melt. Just to be sure I put a heavy lid on top, which also helps keep in heat and melts them quicker.

[rugerglocker]

I'll be the one going against the grain.

My local recycler sells wheelweights. They had a bucket of them sitting out front, and I kid you not...they were dug up out of the mud. Looked like someone buried them 20 years ago.

I tried smelting as-is at first, but discovered dirt is heavier than lead (somehow). There was a nice layer of it in the bottom of my pot, and no amount of fluxing got it out.

It had to be washed off, no choice. I discovered if the weights are piled up in my little skillet, the water steams off first before they melt. Just to be sure I put a heavy lid on top, which also helps keep in heat and melts them quicker.

I can understand this, it sounds like a rare exception because you had unusually dirty weights?

[trk]

I spread them out on my back deck (concrete). Several rains later and a day or two in the sun and they get shoveled back into the bucket. MINIMUM labor.

[blackthorn]

Dirty WW??? WW aint dirty--just wait till you get a pile of OLD used lead plumbing pipe!! Now, that's dirty! BUT all that stuf floats to the top. I never wash WW (or anything else) just pick out what trash I can see and burn the rest!

[songdog53]

I just melt them and flux them good and then remove steel clips and crud, sometmes flux mix againt and stir it really deep into pot to make sure there isn't any crud hiding anywhere.

[Crash_Corrigan]

Using a good thermometer I keep the alloy at about 700 degrees or less. I never clean the ww's. I remove the tire stems, lug nuts, cigarette butts or any other garbage prior to placing ww's in smelting pot.

I get the mix melted and skim off the dross with a large slotted metal spoon. Once the majority of the dross is gone I start to flux. Pat Martin's CFF gets the nod here. Smells good and does a good job. I flux with a wooden paint stirrer and never touch to bottom with it. Only the sides. I flux again and again until the alloy is nice and shiney.

Then with a large #4 ladle I pour my ingot molds full and have at it. I have a set of ingot molds welded up by a shooting buddy and they really have made the smelting chore a lot easier. They cool fast and make dandy ingots with little fuss nor muss. The management of the trailer park where I live came over and tried to find a reason to make me stop doing this but they could not find a rule or regulation against it so I kept on smelting until the last bucket was gone.

I went through 12 buckets of ww's in about 5 hours and ended up with a lovely pile of ingots.

[alamogunr]

I went through 12 buckets of ww's in about 5 hours and ended up with a lovely pile of ingots.

You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din!

Twelve buckets of WW would take me two days to clean up and another day to recover. I haven't had 12 buckets at one time in several years.