how come????

[mainiac]

How come wheelweights are not made out of pure lead? Surely,they didnt want to make them with the perfect alloy so we all could melt them down????

How long has the ww been used for casting?When was it invented??thanks,,,,

[olafhardt]

I have often wondered this myself. I am not sure they are the best, it's just they are available and they will work for casting boolits. When they turn to zinc we'll work that out.

[DoctorBill]

Better get 'em while the gettin' is good !

Wheel Weights are now illegal in Washington State - soon you won't be
able to find them at all.

When I found out they are illegal here in WA, I bought 300 lbs of WW's in a
recycling center.
Last visit, they hardly had any left.

DoctorBill

[MikeS]

The reason WW's are made with the alloy they are is mainly for strength. If they made the WW's out of pure lead they could get damaged too easily considering that they're designed to sit on the rim of a car's wheel. When they made the stick on style weights, they did go to using pure lead, as they're considerably smaller than the clip on type, so I guess they wanted to get as much weight into each one as was possible, and pure lead is heavier than the clip on wheel weight alloy. The alloy used for clip on wheel weights is actually a fairly common one for industrial lead castings, also called antimonial lead. The antimony is added for strength, and just a small amount of tin is added, just enough to make it easier to cast the wheel weights. That's why so many people add more tin to WW's, they have enough tin to aid casting the fairly uncomplicated shape of a wheel weight, but to get the lead to easily cast into the more complex shape of a boolit, usually more tin is needed.

[DoctorBill]

What percent Tin (Sn) would make for better cast bullets ?
What percent Tin is normally in Wheel Weights ?

Can tin be got at recycling centers ?

If so, what form is it in i.e. what recycled material would the tin be in ?

DoctorBill

[Larry Gibson]

Generally the composition of WWs is considered to be 95% lead, 0.5% tin and 4% antimony. The BHN is considered to be 9. Of course that composition can very with used WWs because you don't know which ones have been reprocessed, they are not of the same make and you may have lead "stick ons" mixed in. That generic composition information is found in several cast bullet manuals, most noteably Lyman's Cast Bullet Handbooks.

I have come to the point that I just add 2% tin to WWs. Some add less but I've found that 2% brings the alloy up to about the maximum of solubility of tin in lead and makes a better ternary alloy and gives much better bullets with less rejects. BHN increases to around 12. This makes for a much better "all around alloy" than does plian WWs.

Larry Gibson

[leadman]

1 to 2% tin added helps fill-out. The less complicated boolit shapes like the Lee 9mm or 40cal truncated cone boolits fill out well without added tin most of the time. A Lyman 160gr Thompson style SWC usually needs tin.

Rotometals has a sale on this weekend. They are a sponsor here. Look at the top of the page.

If you can find solder from radiator shops at the scrap yard this is a good source of tin.

[williamwaco]

How long has the ww been used for casting? When was it invented??thanks

,,,,

I have been using them since about 1955. The man who tought me bullet casting was over 60 and he said he had "Always used them."



.

[montana_charlie]

I think it was discovered that wheelweights make acceptable bullets when early pioneers ran short of lead during Indian battles ... and started yanking the weights from their wagon wheels.

Of course that destroyed the smooth ride and comfort of the wagons, and caused uneven wear of their steel tires. But, as those stalwart explorers always said, "It is what it is, Bruh! Just don't dink wi' no zink!"

CM

[quilbilly]

Most of the time wheel weights will make good boolits but after 30 years of making saltwater and freshwater fishing jigs, I have found that about 10% of batches of wheelweights I have used would have not shot well. As a result, I just do my own alloys from pure soft lead, magnum lead bird shot found at garage sales, and a little tin.
The birdshot (usually #4 and #6's) has the hardening agents like arsenic and antimony to get the pure lead to the hardness I need for the job each boolit has to do. By itself, the birdshot is too hard for the boolits I need. The little bit of tin makes the boolits pour superbly in the molds. My usual alloy is somewhere around 60% pure, 38% birdshot and 2% tin.

[DoctorBill]

I have a question about using Lead Based Wheel Weight Metal.

If I melt the WW metal (cast into one pound ingots) in my LEE melter and then
turn down the temp slightly, will the non-Lead components of the alloy
tend to separate or float to the top ?

I am wondering if I can modify or change the alloy by going back down towards
the melting point of Lead and allow the added antimony and Zinc to separate out
and be skimmed off.

I would like to get some of these WW Ingots back toward a higher percentage of
Lead and less of other metals for shooting in Black Powder Rifles.

With some of the latest WW's, I got a layer of bright shiny cottage cheese consistency
metal floating to the top and I skimmed it off.

Would that have been Zinc ?

DoctorBill

[bowenrd]

Better get 'em while the gettin' is good !

Wheel Weights are now illegal in Washington State - soon you won't be
able to find them at all.

When I found out they are illegal here in WA, I bought 300 lbs of WW's in a
recycling center.
Last visit, they hardly had any left.

DoctorBill

How do people in Washington balance tires and wheels with out wheel weights?:-D

[DoctorBill]

Ahh ! I left out the word "LEAD" in my statement....sorry.

"(Lead based) Wheel Weights are now illegal in Washington State - soon you won't be
able to find them at all."

Are you a lawyer ?

DoctorBill

[sqlbullet]

I have a question about using Lead Based Wheel Weight Metal.

If I melt the WW metal (cast into one pound ingots) in my LEE melter and then
turn down the temp slightly, will the non-Lead components of the alloy
tend to separate or float to the top ?

I am wondering if I can modify or change the alloy by going back down towards
the melting point of Lead and allow the added antimony and Zinc to separate out
and be skimmed off.

I would like to get some of these WW Ingots back toward a higher percentage of
Lead and less of other metals for shooting in Black Powder Rifles.

With some of the latest WW's, I got a layer of bright shiny cottage cheese consistency
metal floating to the top and I skimmed it off.

Would that have been Zinc ?

DoctorBill

No. The alloy is a solution, like salt water. The only way to seperate them is via chemical process like oxidation. You coul maybe boil off components as well if you had a blast furnace.

Zinc likes to bond with sulfur. You can reduce zinc content by adding sulfur and stirring. Best bet is to keep the zinc out to begin with. Since zinc alloys have a high melting temp just get a thermometer and keep the temp below 700 when melting down ww. But once the are combined getting them apart is not easy.

[bowenrd]

Ahh ! I left out the word "LEAD" in my statement....sorry.

"(Lead based) Wheel Weights are now illegal in Washington State - soon you won't be
able to find them at all."

Are you a lawyer ?

DoctorBill

:kidding: I knew what you implied, just had to give you some trouble. Me a lawyer? Naw, just an old retired fool with nothing better to do at the time. Have a good one.

[DoctorBill]

bowenrd - I suspected that you were pulling my chain.
It is just that there are several people on this forum who get really stinky and
make these pleasant conversations into something nasty and obnoxious.

sqlbullet - Yes it is a solution, but when the temp falls, some of the metals come
out of the solution as Zinc will do (solubility).

I have obtained four different buckets of Wheel Weights over maybe 20 years
and each time they acted differently. (Over 250 lbs total).

The last two times, I got various metals floating to the top - some very different looking
from the others.
The ingots are shiny and whitish vs dull and gray in color.

I am a chemist, but I don't know alloys nor can I identify what metal is floating
on top of molten wheel weights when I see it.

My current wheel weight ingots are very white & shiny and don't seem to cast as
nice a bullet as my 20 year old dull gray wheel eight metal.

Given this floating "dross" of some metal or another, I wondered if slowly lowering
the melt temperature might afford me a way to get some of the unknown metals
out of the newer WW's.

I know it is a dice shoot when obtaining WW's today - if you can even find
any in this Environmentalist controlled Police State mentality (WA State).

DoctorBill

[MtGun44]

lower melting temp, better mold fill out, and
enough strength to withstand high speeds and pothole impacts.

Bill