Wheel Weight Conundrum - HELP NEEDED

[michiganmike]

Good Afternoon,

I've not posted for awhile. But I really need help. I have been casting my own bullets for the last 6 or 7 years. And since I retired in February, I intend to do a lot more of it.

The problem I am having has to do with wheel weights. I get them from a metal salvage yard in Lansing, MI. Up until the last batch I have had no problem with them. But I melted down a batch earlier this week, after checking to ensure there was no zinc weights in the lot.

I melt them down and fluxed, stirred, pulled out all the wheel weight clasps, etc. as I always do. [Ipour them into a mini-muffin pan. They fit nicely in my Lee 10# bottom pour.]

But once melted to 675 degrees, verified by my Lyman lead thermometer, the top of the pot had a slushy scum on top. The odd part is this slush had a golden sheen to it. And the stuff would not cast a decent bullet. The bullets fell out of the mold porous. No edges were sharp and crisp. They were useless.

I poured out the remaining alloy (whatever it was) and this golden sheen was stuck to the sides of the pot. I scraped and scrubbed it off. And my pot is as clean as I can get it. Pretty clean.

A few minutes ago I finished going through about 15 pounds of wheel weights and checked them again, one by one. If they had paint on them (a few did) I discarded them. If the were too hard for me to make an easy scratch with my thumb nail, I discarded them. If I didn't like the looks of them for any reason - I discarded them. And I will be going through the good ones one more time for a final culling.

If it comes down to it, I will buy my alloy from Roto Metals. But I hate to do that because of the cost involved. And I have had such good results with salvaged wheel weights in the past.

I don't want to waste my time melting down, fluxing, cleaning up another pot of lead only to have the same results. But I have no idea what I am dealing with.

Has anyone else encountered this problem?

What was the source of the problem?

Does anyone know what may be the cause of this golden sheen?

Any suggestions are welcome.

Thank you for your help with this vexing situation.

MichiganMike

[Shiloh]

There are A LOT of zinc WW where there used to be all lead. Usuall, the zinc WW will float ontop of molten lead. They are easy to pick out that way as there is 125 degrees difference (Approx) between the two metals. How accurate is your thermometer? Usually you can pick them out as the lead ones are all ready liquid.

Shiloh

[Fishman]

I would think not enough heat, particularly if you checked for zinc prior to melting.

[GBertolet]

I had exactly the same thing. I bought wheelweights, and there were some truck wheelweights in the mix. Fortunately I seperated them, and melted them seperately in my plumbers pot, to mold into ingots. I had the silverly slag on top, that would not go back into the mix. I skimmed it off, and it was heavy like lead. Maybe it bonded with the lead?

I segregated these, and put them in my ProMelt to cast some buckshot. When melted, I had the same type of slag again. I started casting 00 buck, and after short while the spout clogged up, and I had to finish casting with a dipper. The shot cast OK, and were about 2gr lighter. 51.5gr vs the nominal 54gr. They were very hard. I only had about 35 lb of this stuff, so I used it all up on the buckshot, and had a major clean up on the ProMelt afterwards.

I don't know what additional was in these truck wheelweights. I know there was some lead alloy, with some unknown element. Zinc seems to be the most likely suspect.

Usually when I have any zinc wheelweights mixed in with lead alloy ones, they just float to the top of the plumbers pot and I just skim them off.

[RedHawk357Mag]

I don't specifically can't answer your question about golden sheen. But I would say don't scrap the alloy without first maybe hitting it with some muriatic acid (hydrochloric acid) to see if it reacts with the lead. I would take a drilling shard of the alloy and test it for the excessive foaming and black color change for presence of zinc. And even then if it tested positive for zinc I still wouldn't toss because I usually have to pay for wheel weights and I test every darn one with wire cutters. Yes i know you can gamble with melting and skimming but I'm just not that lucky:( The reason I wouldn't toss them is there are some threads about using sulfur and copper sulphate for removing Zinc. My kids will probably be getting rid of any unfinished zinc projects as i just couldn't bear to toss away. Maybe take a smaller portion of the offending alloy and cut it with some good alloy and see if usable. Welcome to the club:) hope someone has better info for you.

[9w1911]

I sort as best I can but I also never smelt ww over 600-650 degrees. I had that silver sheen before, not the gold that you mention but the silver sheen you mentioned and I think that was just oxidization

[MrWolf]

I haven't smelted mine yet but I do have truck ww's that when I used the side cutter felt like lead. Do I need to keep them separate? This is the first I have heard of it through my reading of the posts and sticky's

[Walter Laich]

I've gotten away from WW and gone to buying lead off this site. They do all the smelting and have the lead cast into ingots. Sometimes you can find it for $1 per pound which isn't bad in today's market

[geargnasher]

I don't specifically can't answer your question about golden sheen. But I would say don't scrap the alloy without first maybe hitting it with some muriatic acid (hydrochloric acid) to see if it reacts with the lead. I would take a drilling shard of the alloy and test it for the excessive foaming and black color change for presence of zinc. And even then if it tested positive for zinc I still wouldn't toss because I usually have to pay for wheel weights and I test every darn one with wire cutters. Yes i know you can gamble with melting and skimming but I'm just not that lucky:( The reason I wouldn't toss them is there are some threads about using sulfur and copper sulphate for removing Zinc. My kids will probably be getting rid of any unfinished zinc projects as i just couldn't bear to toss away. Maybe take a smaller portion of the offending alloy and cut it with some good alloy and see if usable. Welcome to the club:) hope someone has better info for you.

Good post. I test with wirecutters too because some of the zinkers are unmarked and resemble certain shapes of good weights.

I'll add that painted weights are usually just fine, they're only painted to prevent corrosion when salty roads and aluminum wheels meet. If they're zinc, you'll barely be able to scratch them with wire cutters.

Tin usually exhibits a shingy, golden hue on the surface, and pure lead can have a similar effect before turning blue and purple.

By the way, it's elemental sulphur, NOT copper sulphate that's used to remove any zinc if present, but it's a nasty process. The CuSO4 is a good way to add copper into the mix, I believe Popper has some experience doing that on purpose to get copper into the mix.

I've found few problems that a good dose of sawdust and ladling the mix up and drizzling it back through the sawdust layer repeatedly hasn't fixed, so I'd try that plus more heat. The only thing that really makes me think zinc contamination is the lighter boolits and the spout stoppage.

Gear

[ACrowe25]

I would think not enough heat, particularly if you checked for zinc prior to melting.

Yeah I agree. My looks the same.

[michiganmike]

Thank you all for the great responses. Just a couple of comments. My only reason for tossing out the painted wheel weights is that I can't easily get through the paint with my thumb nail to scratch the alloy with my thumb nail.

Do wire cutters do as good a job as one's thumb nail? That would be great, as it requires a lot of scrubbing to clean up my hands after all that thumb nail scratching!

I am going to avoid the big truck wheel weights in the future. There were some in the batch I used. I thought I was lucky to find them - nice, big, fat weights, fewer clips to fish out. They were harder than the other wheel weights. But if that is due to something unusual in the alloy that caused my problems, I don't need the frustration.

I will be taking the lead muffins and my rejected wheel weights back to the metal salvage yard. They are great people and will buy them back, or give me an even pound for pound trade. I showed them some of the bullets I cast from their wheel weights. They thought it was pretty cool that their scrap lead could be turned into something so useful. So, they are happy to work with me.

Second, regarding temperature, I am relying on Lyman to make an accurate thermometer. I don't know how to check it. If I use another thermometer to check the reliability of the Lyman, then I am assuming that thermometer #2 is accurate. And I don't have thermometer #2.

To date I have been casting wheel weight bullets at 700 - 725 degrees with good results. I experimented briefly with this problematic batch of wheel weights using 675 degrees. That didn't help.

I have come to several conclusions. First, I will go back to this salvage yard and trade in the alloy that caused the problem. And I will be much more selective in choosing the wheel weights I accept from their supply on hand.

Second, if that doesn't yield good results I will look for another source. The company I have been buying from gets their wheel weights from all over the county. Maybe finding one single garage or shop would reduce the probability of getting some bad wheel weights in the mix.

Finally, if that doesn't work I will look for a source of wheel weight alloy or a reasonable facsimile from a foundry. If Roto Metals sold wheel weight alloy, I would buy from them.

Again, thank you all for your comments. This is a great fraternity for bullet casters.

MichiganMike

[KYCaster]

Although I don't know it for a fact, after having similar experiences, I think that some WW manufacturers are recycling WW which may contain some Zn weights.

So far, I've been able to get a usable 50 WW/50 Pb alloy, but I expect the problem to progressively get worse until we can no longer get usable WW.

Jerry

[RedHawk357Mag]

Wire cutters and dedicated set of comfortable leather gloves for checking wheel weights. Inevitable the phone will ring when covered in wheel weight muck, much easier to shed glove to answer phone and just easier to stay cleaner. I use a set of diagonal wire cutters to check mine.

Checking thermometers. If you want to check against boiling water you can search "Water Altitude Boiling Point Calculator" this gives you the boiling point for water at your location based on Barr pressure and Altitude. Or if you got some pure lead you check it that way, think it melts at 621 degrees.

[JonB_in_Glencoe]

To anyone smelting WW's and think they have Zinc Contamination.
Descriptions are nice, but pictures would really help us to answer your questions. Testing a sample with muriatic acid, will confirm if you have Zinc in your alloy.

So, now what to do with a batch of alloy that is Zinc contaminated. It happened to me once, luckily it was a small batch, about 15lbs [pictured below]. Heat it back up...HOT, as hot as you can get it. You'll see some colors [tan,blue,purple] Don't sweat it, you may be loosing some Tin, but not very much if you are quick about this... and heck you were about to dump this alloy anyway. Flux with saw dust and skim...a couple times is all that's needed, you'll never get all the "oatmeal" looking stuff off the top. Keep the melt HOT, Now pour your ingots, avoiding the "oatmeal" looking stuff on the top, as much as possible. This is what I did, and even then you can see the effect on my ingots in the photo.

Now when I cast some boolits for just plinking, typically I use Range scrap that I've picked up at the pistol/rifle berm, I may also add other unknown scrap alloy to the mix...Then to a near full pot [20lb], I'll add one or two ingots [one or two lbs] of the Zinc contaminated alloy. The zinc will get diluted enough where it doesn't effect the castability of the alloy.

So I wouldn't throw away any lead alloy if it has some Zinc in it.
Jon

http://i640.photobucket.com/albums/uu127/JonB_in_Glencoe/reduced100_2661.jpg

[cbrick]

I am going to avoid the big truck wheel weights in the future. There were some in the batch I used. I thought I was lucky to find them - nice, big, fat weights, fewer clips to fish out. They were harder than the other wheel weights. But if that is due to something unusual in the alloy that caused my problems, I don't need the frustration. MichiganMike

I wouldn't avoid them, the best score of WW I've ever gotten were from a truck tire store. They don't BHN test any harder or softer than car weights and they don't cast any different. You may have gotten some type of contamination in the alloy but I really doubt it was from truck weights.

Absolutely use wire cutters, not your thumb.

Rick

[Bill in Ky]

I saw the same thing yesterday. The golden/copper colored sheen floating on top would skim off but it did buildup in the pot. I had to knock that buildup out with a screwdriver. I have had these WW's for 25 years, used them to mold duck decoy anchors. Did they use zinc that long ago?
How much sawdust, and does it matter from what tree, should I put on a half full Lee 10lb pot?

[cbrick]

I saw the same thing yesterday. The golden/copper colored sheen floating on top would skim off but it did buildup in the pot. I had to knock that buildup out with a screwdriver. I have had these WW's for 25 years, used them to mold duck decoy anchors. Did they use zinc that long ago?

Absolutely NOT zinc. I don't know what the contamination might be but it's not zinc. Zinc is not golden/copper colored.


How much sawdust, and does it matter from what tree, should I put on a half full Lee 10lb pot?

Cover the pot about a half inch or so, don't try to force the sawdust/ash under the surface, you can't anyway. Use a stainless spoon to bring alloy up from the bottom and pour back through the saw dust. Keep doing this until most all of the alloy has been filtered through the carbon/ash. Takes some time to properly flux, just sprinkling it on top won't flux but it will create an oxygen barrier slowing further oxidation.

Rick

[Bill in Ky]

Thanks cbrick.
Should I use the sawdust when first melting WW and pouring ingots or do it again when I use to ingots to mold boolits?
Does the sawdust flux do away with the candle wax or should that be used too..

Man, learning new stuff at my age is tuff !! d:^)

[cbrick]

I do both, flux when making ingots and flux again every time I turn the pot on. Sawdust is a great flux but it is also an excellent reductant. Was is not a flux, cannot flux but will reduce tin back into the melt. There really is no need to use both. The sawdust will leave your casting pot cleaner than wax also.

Rick

[bangerjim]

I've gotten away from WW and gone to buying lead off this site. They do all the smelting and have the lead cast into ingots. Sometimes you can find it for $1 per pound which isn't bad in today's market

AGREE^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

ONLY way to go. Forget the mess, stink, unknown content, and general hassle of WW's......especially if you have to BUY them from someone!

Spend that money on clean guaranteed pure and alloys from good folks on here. (ever really figure your cost of gasoline, time, propane, etc is to smelt WW's?)

Or get it from your scrap yards where you are scourging those filthy WW's.

I have not melted WW's in over 3 years due to the stink, mess, unavailability, and poor quality. Yes.....WW's have gotten softer over the years!!!!! Proven by several on here, including Larry Gibson and myself.

Not worth the hassle anymore.


Melting Pb is fun..............just do it with clean alloys!

bangerjim

[cbrick]

Forget the mess, stink, unknown content, and general hassle of WW's......especially if you have to BUY them from someone!

Spend that money on clean guaranteed pure and alloys from good folks on here. (ever really figure your cost of gasoline, time, propane, etc is to smelt WW's?)

Or get it from your scrap yards where you are scourging those filthy WW's.

I have not melted WW's in over 3 years due to the stink, mess, unavailability, and poor quality. Yes.....WW's have gotten softer over the years!!!!! Proven by several on here, including Larry Gibson and myself.

Not worth the hassle anymore.


Melting Pb is fun..............just do it with clean alloys! bangerjim

Jim, you shouldn't post such things if they are fact. It may well be how you see it but that hardly makes it fact. New casters read these posts and they shouldn't have to read someone's opinion as though it's the final word.

WW alloy did undergo a change in Antimony percentage but that was 35+ years ago and since they have been relatively stable. Have you read the posts on XrF testing of WW? There are stickies on it and these results are from areas of the country from coast to coast and are more consistent than even I thought they would be. The alloy is now pretty well known and it is a great boolit alloy. Cost of gas & propane, I don't have enough invested there to come close to $1 a pound.

Dirty? Yep, they sure can be but then I've never been afraid to get my hands dirty. Hassle? Guess I don't consider myself a lazy person and the result is well worth my efforts.

WW may well not be for you but you don't have the final word on it. WW alloy is a great boolit alloy. That's the final word.

Rick

[bangerjim]

Jim, you shouldn't post such things if they are fact. It may well be how you see it but that hardly makes it fact. New casters read these posts and they shouldn't have to read someone's opinion as though it's the final word.

WW alloy did undergo a change in Antimony percentage but that was 35+ years ago and since they have been relatively stable. Have you read the posts on XrF testing of WW? There are stickies on it and these results are from areas of the country from coast to coast and are more consistent than even I thought they would be. The alloy is now pretty well known and it is a great boolit alloy. Cost of gas & propane, I don't have enough invested there to come close to $1 a pound.

Dirty? Yep, they sure can be but then I've never been afraid to get my hands dirty. Hassle? Guess I don't consider myself a lazy person and the result is well worth my efforts.

WW may well not be for you but you don't have the final word on it. WW alloy is a great boolit alloy. That's the final word.

Rick

Your opinion.........my opinion. We agree to disagree.


We report........you decide. It's called research.

There is absolutely NOTHING wrong with people using WW"s ......IF......they can find them!!!!! There is nothing magic about WW alloy coming from WW's. One can easily make the same alloy starting with hardball or other Sb rich alloys, pure, and Sn alloy. Many people are complaining about the scarcity of Pb weights these days. Newbees should be aware (by reading my "opinion) that you can very easily make your own certified, pure, clean COWW alloy without messing with actual weights scrounged/begged/stolen/bought from various sources. Sources that are rapidly drying up due to state and federal statures against our beloved Pb.


banger

[Nikolaus]

I have smelted over 100lbs of wheel weights that I get for free. At $1 per lb, I think the savings are significant and well worth my time. I just started casting this year. I think even if I had to pay $0.30 a lb I would still smelt wheel weights and range lead. I also smelt and cast using a gas turkey fryer and the tank usage is minimal so far as I have smelted 100lbs and cast over 1000. The tank is not even close to running dry.

[novalty]

In my opinion, unless you are buying from a place like Rotometals you do not eliminate unknown content buying ingots on the forum.

My last smelt of wheel weights I had they slush too, but only because the lead hadn't gotten up to temp. So I tried mixing the pot to try and distribute hot and cold material. Even as it turned to liquid I still found a couple unmelted unharmed zinc weights that had been missed in sorting.

[mikeym1a]

Just a few days ago, I stopped at my favorite tire store that usually has a goodly supply of WW's. I brought home 145#. So far, I have smelted and cast ingots weighing 44lbs. I have found more Fe and Zn weights than I like, but, so far it's been good. Once I have them cleaned and cast, I stack them, and when I'm ready to start casting boolits, I mix my alloy. I'm not fond of the dirt and the mounds of clips that seem to be accumulating, but that is part of the deal. Guess I need to get my son to come give me a hand and get all the Fe and clips gathered up and go to the salvage yard. The tire store sells them to me for .20/lb. If the salvage yard has them, it .50/lb. the only benefit of the salvage yard is that they have already been sorted. I have linotype, foundry type, lead, WW ingots, and tin. I can pretty much make what I want. But I try to do it as economically as possible. Ordering from RotoMetals or some other such supplier is okay, but then you have shipping. I'll keep looking for my WW's, and not complain about the dirt. Some days, it is simply a pleasant drive, which occasionally is more important than the WW's.

[s mac]

You have gotten some good advice here, but I would add that just because the ww is painted is not criteria to scrap it, I work in a dealership and we use painted weights on alloy wheels to prevent corrosion of the wheel, ours are marked MC. You can test these with sidecutters.

[GaryN]

Sorting is the worst part of wheelweights. I use a magnet and some diagonal cutters(dikes). It the dikes with can bite it, it goes in the pot. I do separate the stickons from the clipons.

[RedHawk357Mag]

Something that I saw the other day in the scrap yard is kind a leaving me to believe that wheel weights are starting to become a non-starter anymore. My local recycle yard sells me lead and pretty much lets me go back and pick what I want. Within reason, not stuff from bottom of box, or all day picking and choosing. While checking what they had I noticed that they had what appeared to me, to be some guys dross of clips and zinc culls. So if scrap yards are combining zinc and lead and the wheel weight manufacturers are buying recycle lead to stay in the black in the books it does make sense that wheel weight supply might be in decline very soon.

[gtgeorge]

Don't let the bad batch discourage you as it happens for whatever reason. I and another member here got a few batches of alloy with those characteristics from a member here. That drove me to start buying from a foundry and am spoiled with that alloy but still stop by the old tire store and pick some up and welcome the chance to dig a berm on occasion.

If I didn't cast as much as I do I would still rely on WW and range lead and put up with the mess that goes with it just because it is great to salvage. The data that a kind member shared for WW scans let me feel confident that the COWW I scrounge will make an alloy of about .5-3-96 with a bit of arsenic. I add some to my known alloy when I want to do hardened bullets as they harden so much faster with the addition of a little COWW to the mix.

Yes alloy done at a foundry can spoil you but good alloys can also still be scrounged.

[Tar Heel]

The "golden" sheen is probably oxidation of the zinc/lead alloy at VERY HIGH temperature. The zinc wasn't melting so you probably turned up the heat assuming the heat was too low to melt the lead. I stress the word "sheen" or simply color. We will all need to figure out what to do with the zinc now since lead can be harmful to us! Didn't we all use to keep the lead out of landfills? Thanks to the EPA for watching out for us pure dumb-as@ folks huh? Meanwhile at Duke Power....$$$$$$$=Dump anything, anywhere.

[tryn2rest]

Just my 2 cents. I am just starting the casting process. Actually today was the first "melt down" of about 200 pounds of wheel weights I was given. I separated the weights and using the "I Guess" method with a knife and a magnet saved what I thought was lead. I bought a Lyman big dipper kit to get started and to make ingots. Much to my surprise my first batch had an inch + of slag on top of the lead. After picking out the clips and fluxing (paraffin)I still had all this slag. Being a newbie I fluxed again and stirred the pot, the slag still rose to the top. It was more of a scoop it off than skimming project. This was a little confusing as the metal is silver colored, but would not mix with the lead. These wheel weights came from a tire shop on the Illinois - Missouri border. Illinois has banned lead. The shop does car and truck tires. Anyone know what this mystery metal is and how I can avoid getting it in the pot? From a full 10 pound batch I got about 1 lb clips, 6 pounds lead and a pile of this scrap. Am I missing something? If this is a sign of the times? The bottom line is I will have to remelt the ingots and flux them again to assure quality. Time vs cost buying a clean alloy may be the way to------after I finish the freebies of course.

[Whitespider]

Wheel weights aren't scarce here... as far as I know there ain't any EPA regulation on their road use and Iowa doesn't have one either. Back in '09 there were 4 bills in the Iowa legislature attempting to ban lead wheel weights... all 4 failed to pass.

I sort my wheel weights, but I'm not looking for zinc... I'm sorting out the softer stick-on weights. I do cull the zinc/steel I spot, but I ain't gonna' test 'em with side-cutters and such. I can sort a full bucket in less than ½ an hour... and I only miss 4-5 zinc/steel weights in the process. Really, I can spot most of the zinc/steel by sight and feel (weight).

I start by sorting until I have enough to fill the dutch oven and toss it on the heat (I use an old electric kitchen range in the shop). I never use a thermometer, don't even own one. While those are melting I do some more sorting and toss them in as the melt settles, and sort some more. Just as the melt goes 100% liquid I toss some saw chips on top and start pushing clips and saw chips down into the melt... any zinc/steel I missed is readily spotted at that time and I cull them. After a minute or so of this I scoop off the clips with a slotted spoon and nearly all the dirt and junk is stuck to them... I end up with a bright shiny surface. Still, I'll toss in a few more saw chips and stir... and a little more junk will come up from the bottom. I don't ever do the scooping from the bottom and pour through the saw chips thing... ain't seen the need. Heck, I only use a teaspoon of saw chips anyway. Then I pour some ingots, refill from the sorted bucket, and sort some more while those melt. In other words, I only sort when I'm waiting for the melt... I don't normally just sit and use time sorting only.

One thing I've noticed is the soft stick-on weights require a lot longer to "go liquid"... they require a lot more heat than the clip-ons. They have a thick layer of slush for some amount of time that hangs on even longer around the edges of the pot... and once it finally "goes liquid", is fluxed, and sits for a minute or two it will have a yellowish/gold "sheen" or skin on top... let it get hot enough and i will eventually turn greenish/blue.

Do you sort the soft stick-on weights from the clip-on weights??

My guess is you had a batch of wheel weights with more lead and less tin than usual... you just need more heat, or the addition of some tin. Maybe the bucket had an abnormally large amount of soft stick-on weights. I know I'm finding more and more of them... I melted down the stick-ons from 5 buckets last night and got over 150 pounds of ingots. That's and average of something over 30 pounds per bucket.
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[Whitespider]

So if scrap yards are combining zinc and lead and the wheel weight manufacturers are buying recycle lead to stay in the black in the books it does make sense that wheel weight supply might be in decline very soon.

No, that won't happen. How could a ¼oz wheel weight always weigh a ¼oz unless it was always made from relatively consistent alloy?? Manufacturers ain't gonna' create different size molds every time they get a new batch of lead. How could zinc-contaminated lead be used in the manufacturing of... say... car batteries??

Scrap lead is sent to recycling foundries, the recycled, or "reconditioned" lead is then sold to manufacturers, such as wheel weight, battery and lead sheeting makers. Foundries have the equipment, materials and means to return that scrap lead very close to pure. If they couldn't, then lead recycling flat wouldn't work except to make ballast weights for race car frames.
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