New to the endangered list.......

[Knarley]

I'm afraid that free wheel weights are going by way of the Doe-doe bird. I remember when they couldn't give a guy enough of them, and if you didn't get out of there quick, they'd over load your truck.
Heard tell yesterday of $25.00 fer 1/2 a five gallon bucket full. I hope this don't last, or you'll see me sneaken through parkin' lots with a pliers[smilie=1:
Knarley :castmine:

[jleneave]

I know what you mean. I am just getting into bullet casting and I am having some trouble getting wheel weights. I have searched all over the county that I live in and even all the surrounding couties. I have 2 or 3 places that I can get WW, but I do have to pay for them at each place. At one location I give $30.00 for a five gallon bucket, but I actually get about a bucket and a half. One of the reasons that I wanted to start casting bullets was to save money, not the only reason but an important one. I am starting to wonder if maybe I should have waited or picked another hobby. I had one guy at a tire shop that told me that he had just talked with a scrap dealer and he could get $1.50 per lbs for his WW. I told him that he better get over there and sell them before the scrap dealer changed his mind. I have just been trying to hoard all the WW that I can find before I sink a crap load of money into bullet molds, a lubrisizer, and all the accesories that go along with it. I have collected about 1000lbs of WW so far and have started melting them down into ingots. I figure when I get up to about 2000lbs I will go ahead and spring for all the expensive equipment. I think that 2000lbs would be enough to keep me busy for a long time and could justify the $$ for the equipment as I don't shoot near as much as some of the other guys on here.

[JohnSmiles]

I have collected a little over 500 lbs of lead, 345 being cleaned ww's.
I like to shoot, but that is already a lot of shooting right there.
I am still collecting ww's, and when I reach 1,000 lbs, 2,000 at most, I am done.
No way could I shoot up all that in the foreseeable future.
Thats tens of thousands of boolits!
The primers and powder alone will cost a pretty penny to go along with the boolits.
:Fire:

[No_1]

Gentlemen,

I think you are cutting yourself short with a 2000 lb limit. That may SEEM like lot of bullets but it really is not. I am not sure what your shooting amounts are at the moment but as you get more time you will do more shooting. At one time in the not so distant past I was shooting (practice only) about 500 rounds of 45 ACP per week. That was about 900 lbs per year. When you add in the few rifle bullets I cast I used pretty close to 5000 lbs in 5 years.

Never stop collecting, in fact if I were you I would make it my primary goal in life to collect as much as you can then leave it up to your heirs to figure out what to do with them when you pass.....

[hammerhead357]

Double Ditto for what No 1 said and I don't consider it hoarding at all, I prefer to call it stockpiling. I have laid by about 1200 lbs of Lino, 350 lbs of foundry type and I think about 2000 lbs of WWs.
I am still on the look out for more of each but mostly WW. I can use the foundry type and about an equal amount of WWs to make Lino. But I feel like I am short on WWs and it is getting tough here to find cheap ones or better yet the best of all, free......Wes

[John Boy]

I'm afraid that free wheel weights are going by way of the Doe-doe bird
Naw - just picked up a 5 gallon pail today at a gas station - Free. Was plenty of them thin ones with the glue adhesive on the back - Sweet! [smilie=1:

[johnho]

You guys are scaring me. I have about 2600 pounds of ingots and was hoping that would last after I retire this year. Maybe I need more. don't want to run out before the big shooter in the sky gets me.

John

[trickyasafox]

I have at best 300 lbs of lead. It's not as easy to come by up in NY. I think Bret is hoarding it all. . . .

[cbr]

A place I get my car worked on said they had some wheel weights they would give me, went and picked them up today, I was expecting like a five gallon bucket or so. He had half a gallon washer fluid jug full. Oh well, cant complain, a few pounds is better than nothing, and it was free.

[Knarley]

The one thing to remember,buying factory bullets will allways be more expensive than boolits. :drinks: The price is up at the moment, I can't see it going forever, of course I didn't see pain' for 'em either...
Knarley

[mroliver77]

I figure between 45-70 -.22 my average boolit weight is 200gr. That is 35 boolits per lb. 1000lbs is 35000 boolits. Shoot 100 a month that comes to 1200 a year giving you enough lead to last 29 years. Bump that up to an ave of 500 per month you have enough for 5.8 years. That is 16.6 rounds a day. This is not very heavy shootin. At todays powder and primer prices(I figure $20lb powder, $22k primers and 20gr load) We are talkin $100 year for materials to push lead. >$8.30 a month. I know guys that spend a lot more than that a day on smokes and or alkyhol. I have the lead habit a little worse than this. I have a few 55 gal drums full and thought I was sitting pretty but I am going to keep bringing it home.
J

[jleneave]

Gentlemen,

I think you are cutting yourself short with a 2000 lb limit. That may SEEM like lot of bullets but it really is not. I am not sure what your shooting amounts are at the moment but as you get more time you will do more shooting. At one time in the not so distant past I was shooting (practice only) about 500 rounds of 45 ACP per week. That was about 900 lbs per year. When you add in the few rifle bullets I cast I used pretty close to 5000 lbs in 5 years.

Never stop collecting, in fact if I were you I would make it my primary goal in life to collect as much as you can then leave it up to your heirs to figure out what to do with them when you pass.....

I re-read my post and I can see where you would draw the conclusion that I was going to stop collecting lead/WW after I have 2000lbs, but I didn't mean that I was going to stop. I will continue to try and collect lead/WW until they are a thing of the past or until I am dead and gone. What I was trying to say is that I think after I have 2000lbs I could justify it in my head/wallet that the expense of the equipment would be worth while and I could stay busy with that amount for a while if my lead sources dried up. I plan on, at first anyway, to cast for .44mag and .45LC and with 2000lbs of lead I could cast roughly 56,000 bullets with an average weight of 250 grains/bullet. That many bullets would keep me busy for a long time, in the mean time I would still be collecting lead/WW. If I ever get to the point I feel I have more lead than I can use I don't think I would have any problem getting rid of any of it. I also plan on casting jigs for bass fishing and have been putting the flat stick on weights in a seperate container for that purpose. I don't include them in the weight for bullets, I look at them as a bonus. Sorry for the confusion.

[No_1]

:-D There was no confusion my brother. :-D
My comment was not directed at you, it was directed at the thread as a whole and whom ever has/will read it.

I believe you are on the right track with your thinking and wish you a happy casting career. I had the same thoughts in the beginning. The cost of lead, primers and powder made shooting very attractive.

There are many different reasons to cast, 3 of which I can think of at the moment:
1) Cast loads are cheaper then jacketed.
2) You can shoot more cast loads for the same money you spend on jacketed.
3) Cast loads will be far more accurate (with a correct fitted boolit) than jacketed.

I think in the end the bottom line is we will spend as much as we can afford to spend on shooting supplies be it jacketed or cast. I have found you must cast in order to be able to shoot the most for the money that is available.

R.




I re-read my post and I can see where you would draw the conclusion that I was going to stop collecting lead/WW after I have 2000lbs, but I didn't mean that I was going to stop. I will continue to try and collect lead/WW until they are a thing of the past or until I am dead and gone. What I was trying to say is that I think after I have 2000lbs I could justify it in my head/wallet that the expense of the equipment would be worth while and I could stay busy with that amount for a while if my lead sources dried up. I plan on, at first anyway, to cast for .44mag and .45LC and with 2000lbs of lead I could cast roughly 56,000 bullets with an average weight of 250 grains/bullet. That many bullets would keep me busy for a long time, in the mean time I would still be collecting lead/WW. If I ever get to the point I feel I have more lead than I can use I don't think I would have any problem getting rid of any of it. I also plan on casting jigs for bass fishing and have been putting the flat stick on weights in a seperate container for that purpose. I don't include them in the weight for bullets, I look at them as a bonus. Sorry for the confusion.

[SWIAFB]

stopped off at the denstest office fgr a 6-mnth cleaning and got a 3lb containor of 98% lead for asking. Iwill take a container in with my name and number in tomarrow.

[jleneave]

:-D There was no confusion my brother. :-D
My comment was not directed at you, it was directed at the thread as a whole and whom ever has/will read it.

I believe you are on the right track with your thinking and wish you a happy casting career. I had the same thoughts in the beginning. The cost of lead, primers and powder made shooting very attractive.

There are many different reasons to cast, 3 of which I can think of at the moment:
1) Cast loads are cheaper then jacketed.
2) You can shoot more cast loads for the same money you spend on jacketed.
3) Cast loads will be far more accurate (with a correct fitted boolit) than jacketed.

I think in the end the bottom line is we will spend as much as we can afford to spend on shooting supplies be it jacketed or cast. I have found you must cast in order to be able to shoot the most for the money that is available.

R.

I totally agree with you about spending as much as we can afford to spend on shooting supplies. When some one ask me about how much money can they save by reloading I tell them that they won't save any money reloading but they can shoot a whole lot more for the same money. If they are anything like me reloading will probably end up costing them more because there is always another piece of equipment that I end up wanting or branching out into different aspects of reloading just like right now with me getting into casting.

I wanted to get into casting for pretty much the same reasons you list and there is one other that I can think of.....I like the thought of taking a piece of trash/scrap and turning it into something that I can use like a perfectly hand poured bullet that may save my life or a family member's life one day or at least put meat in the freezer. Take care.