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SlamFire1
04-15-2008, 10:33 AM
I am preparing to melt down some wheel weights and some 63% Tin bar solder, to make lyman alloy #2, and I was wondering what percentage of tin and other components are in modern wheel weights.

Today I contacted a wheel weight manufacturer and received their current MSDS’s on lead wheel weights and on the zinc wheel weights.

I extracted only what I thought was relevant from the MSDS sheets, so if you want more, comb the web.

I am surprised to see that the composition of wheel weights have not changed much in 30 years. While this is not an exhaustive review of the market, I suspect not much has changed.

Uncoated Weights, Lead

Manufacturer's Name: Perfect Equipment Inc. LaVergne, TN 37086
Date Prepared March 2007

Section II - Hazard Ingredients/Identity Information

Weight Percents

Lead 93.0 – 99.9 %
Antimony 0 – 6.0 %
Arsenic 0 – 0.5 %
Tin 0 – 0.5 %
Copper 0 – 0.1

Section III - Physical/Chemical Characteristics
Boiling Point Approximately 2700° F
Melting Point Approximately 621°F

Zinc wheel weights

NAME: Eastern Alloys, Inc.
PRODUCT NAME: Zinc Casting Alloys DATE PREPARED: 05/28/1998
and high purity Zinc Brighteners Last Review Date: 09/21/06

Weight Percent

Zinc 71.5- 96 %

Aluminum 2 - 28 %

Copper 0 - 11.5 %

454PB
04-15-2008, 01:37 PM
It's hard to argue with a MSDS, but I kinda doubt that maximum of 6% antimony. I'd guess it's closer to 3% or 4%. In order to make Lyman #2, you need 5% antimony, 5% tin, and the rest lead. Assuming the MSDS is correct, all you need to add is 4 1/2% tin.

Another recipe would be 50% linotype, 50% pure lead, plus 3% tin.

I mix monotype 50/50 with pure lead and get a very nice casting alloy that hardness tests around 19 BHN.

grumpy one
04-15-2008, 06:25 PM
The safety information sets a wide range within which they will work, but their actual intention will be much more specific. I've carried out cooling curve analysis on my wheelweights here in Australia, and the batch I tested was 0.2-0.3% tin (can't pick it any more closely than that) and 2% antimony.

I think it was Bass who posted that there are two domestic suppliers of WW in the US, one of whom uses 2% antimony, and the other 4% antimony.

HORNET
04-16-2008, 12:34 PM
If you think about it a bit, that's a pretty wide range of compositions that would yield a wide range of physical properties. They aren't going to put any more expense into making them than absolutely necessary. You can probably figure on the more expensive elements being on the low side of the range.

carpetman
04-16-2008, 12:52 PM
When I first read, over 40 years ago, that you can take wheel weights which are really an UNKNOWN composistion and add exact amounts of other stuff and come out with an EXACT Lyman #2, I didn't buy it. I still don't. So to solve that,I bought a Lyman ingot mold and all my alloy is stamped LYMAN, so it must be. Wheel weights work fine as is in my books. I kept hearing to add tin,which I did. I still didn't land any of my bullets on the moon. Kept shooting over it.

John Boy
04-16-2008, 06:21 PM
2.96% Sb, 0.41% Sn, 0.174% As, 96.456 Pb is the composition of garden variety clamp-on weights ...
National Institute of Standards and Technology reference standards as well as other NIST traceable standards were used to analyze the samples

I've had batches from buckets that were Bhn 15.3 and 14.5

badbob454
06-25-2011, 04:40 PM
when i was young antimony was @ 6 % now depending on maker is 2-4% i have found a wierd alloy lighter than lead harder than lead but softer than zinc it is on clips ons and stickies both and it has a oval and a half moon next to it like this 0) ayone know what it is?, ps is heavier than zinc also ,

ColColt
06-25-2011, 07:04 PM
Most of the ww's I've come across have ranged from BHN9.2-11. It seems to be a toss of the coin depending on where you get them and if you get them from someone else in ingot form. Ten pounds of them plus about 3.5oz of tin usually gives me around a BHN11-12. If I want something close to or approximates Lyman #2 I just use 50/50 lead and Linotype. It almost always give BHN15.(according to the Lee tester)

quilbilly
06-26-2011, 12:31 AM
Over the last 30 years I have turned thousands of pounds of wheelweights into the fishing jigs I make commercially. I have seen tremendous variation in the alloys used, some good and others downright unusable. Consequently, I make my own alloys for boolits mixing known pure lead and birdshot, then add tin as required for each caliber. If you are lucky enough to get a good batch of WW, great, but don't be surprised when some batches are a bit off.

michiganvet
06-26-2011, 08:06 PM
Just be aware, folks, that the numbers for Lyman #2 are by VOLUME and not by weight. You need to consider the specific gravity of lead, tin, and antimony to come up with the WEIGHT of each needed.

Hang Fire
06-26-2011, 08:07 PM
My method of testing hardness over the years will no doubt make some blanch. It consists of melting down WW and adding linotype until throwing an ingot on the concrete floor makes it clang. If it thuds, I just add a bit more linotype. Thanks to daughter's boyfriend (and now my son-in-law) who worked in a tire shop at the time, I am still using WW I garnered over 30 years ago. He got me 1 or 2 five gallon buckets of them every week until I cried uncle, now wish I had not done so so soon.

Hamish
08-05-2014, 02:58 PM
When I first read, over 40 years ago, that you can take wheel weights which are really an UNKNOWN composistion and add exact amounts of other stuff and come out with an EXACT Lyman #2, I didn't buy it. I still don't. So to solve that,I bought a Lyman ingot mold and all my alloy is stamped LYMAN, so it must be. Wheel weights work fine as is in my books. I kept hearing to add tin,which I did. I still didn't land any of my bullets on the moon. Kept shooting over it.

Some time ago I came to the conclusion that because most cast shooters, myself included, are using range scrap, or wheel weights, or both, that because of the unknown amounts of Arsenic, Calcium, Copper, Zink, Bismuth, Tungsten, etc. that these reclaimed lead sources contain, any attempt to apply hard and fast guidelines on how hard one can push what you "think" is your alloy are basically moot.

My personal Newtonian moment came when butchering a doe that I shot with a 10" 7TCU with the Lee 130 2R at three feet. the boolit traveled through the neck/shoulder junction, ran alongside the top of the spine, caught on one of the rays of the spine, smashed through and swapped sides, then ran down the rest of the spine and ended up in the backside of the rear ham.

The Boolit was barely scratched, which I would have thought highly improbable for an AC range scrap/WW/sheet lead boolit pushed by 20 some grains of 2015BR at point blank range.

I guess what I'm getting at, is unless one is buying his alloy from Rotometals or one of the other reputable suppliers, you *mostly* know what you're throwing down range! but you cannot say with any kind of certainty what it will act like until the hammer falls.

nagantguy
08-05-2014, 03:38 PM
Never bought a alloy from roto or anyone used only reclaimed salvaged and stuff I buy by the pail full at the scrap yard. I agree that I can't ever know exactly what it is 100% made up of. But be it wheel weights lead pipe sheet lead or the shed full of Lyman igots I scored some years back what I do use is consistent enough so that when I cast my igots and then large batches of boolits I have been very pleased with my results. Maybe not exactly as hard or soft or mayhapes a grain or three off from batch to batch but never enough to tell a difference shooting idpa, plinking or hunting. I make large batches at a time of my go to boolits so a batch will be close to identical and the next lot maybe next year may vary slightly but as as firm believer in sighting in and practice before match/ hunting season any significant varience would be dealt with by sight adjustment, about a decade in to casting and never had a big enough difference from batch to batch to notice at the branch, range or hunting.using only scrap reclaimed lead of mostly or somewhat unknown composition.