What do people mean by wheel weights?

[thehouseproduct]

When people refer to wheel weights, do they mean the resulting alloy from melting down the whole bucket of mixed stick on and clip together? Or just clip on? I have always taken it to mean just the clip on. I consider the mixture to be 50/50 pure and WW.

[Bloodman14]

WWs can be stick-on or clip-on; stick-on is usually close to pure, clip-on is a tertiary alloy. 50/50 is an equal mix of the two. I am surprised you asked. I guess the term depends on the individual.

[geargnasher]

To me, WW means clippy weights only. 50/50 means clippy weights and dead-soft lead like roof lead, clay pipe joint lead etc. Most of the sticky weights I get around here are painted and either are zinc or are harder lead alloy than most of the clippy weights. Even soft sticky weights run about 7-8 BHN.

Everybody had their own way of doing and naming things, so there's no telling what any given person means when they mention alloy. Even if they're specific, how many have their "WW" metal assayed?

Gear

[shadowcaster]

For me the term "Wheel Weights" just means the weights that the tire shops put on the rims to balance the tires no matter the kind or what they are made of. Then there are they different types and what they are made of, I sort accordingly.

Its like if you were going to fix the brakes on your car. The whole assembly is the brakes. you then have the parts.. rotors, calipers, brake pads.. well you get the point.

Shad

[bearcove]

WW means lead clip ons. The rest is something else.

At least for the last 35 yrs, for me.

[Hang Fire]

For a boolit caster, that is true.

[wrench man]

Wheel weights are anything that's stuck on a wheel to balance it for highway service, when they come off the zinc, iron and ceramic go in one bucket and the lead based go in another, I haven't filled up the "other" bucket yet so I haven't given it a second thought?, the lead bucket comes home and gets separated in to clipon's and tape weights, I haven't yet but I may look into separating the clipon's further than just "clipon's"?, when I beat them onto the wheels the particular types seem to "squish" differently?

[MT Chambers]

I wise caster would prolly separate the clip-ons from the stick on type, as there is quite a diff. in composition as the stick-on type are good for BP, muzzle loader, CAS use.

[Shuz]

I wise caster would prolly separate the clip-ons from the stick on type, as there is quite a diff. in composition as the stick-on type are good for BP, muzzle loader, CAS use.

In addition, not all clip-on ww's are of the same composition. I have found that a lead hardness tester sure takes a lot of the guess work out of making a good repeatable boolit alloy.

[runfiverun]

ww's are clip on and stick on.
when i say ww's i mean clip ons.
and if i refer to soft it's usually stick ons or something softer than clip on's but harder than pure lead.
part of the problem is ww composition has changed once again.
clip on's getting somewhat softer [and coming from more sources] and stick on's getting harder probably from recycling and the overseas sources.

it's getting pretty rough to have a consistency from batch to batch,so much so that i took everything i had smelted into ingots, separated them into 5 different piles, and run them all through my melting pots again making one big batch of old mixed with new.
i then put the starting with the ending batches when re-stacking them trying for one big batch of sameness.

[mdi]

I keep my clip-on wheel weight alloy separate from my stick-on alloy (which also includes my x-ray foils)...