Stick on wheel weights, not soft lead?

[mto7464]

I seperated my stick on WW and tested them for flexibilty before a smelted them into ingots. Recently I got some soft lead pipe and smelted it down. There is a big difference in the hardness of these two metals. Has anyone actually tested these for hardness?

I also notice if I drop the ingots the stick on clang more like wheel weights, but not quite as much, and the pure lead just goes thud.

[chaos]

i dont know, but I've got a pile of them that I did not melt with my regular wheel weights. I would like to know as well

[ktw]

I usually get around 5-5.5 BHN on pure lead and 5.5-6.5 BHN with stick on wheelweights.

I don't consider the stick-ons to be pure lead and keep them seperate, but they are soft enough to be used as pure/soft lead in most applications.

-ktw

[grumpy one]

I twist-test my stick-on weights. At least three-quarters of them are pretty stiff, and i throw them in with the clip-on weights. The ones that aren't stiff I melt separately. By doing that I find that the soft stick-ons average 5.3 BHN after they're cast into ingots. In other words, the distinctly soft stick-ons are pretty close to pure lead. I haven't melted the stiff stick-ons separately, so I can't say what their hardness is, but there is quite a difference in stiffness so they must be harder. On the other hand I've never had any success hand-twisting any of my clip-on wheelweights, which are 2% antimony and average 10.6 BHN. So there you have it: the stiff stick-ons are more than 5.3 BHN, but considerably less than 10.6 BHN. Nailing it down more closely than that would require specific research.

[Wicky]

I'm with ktw on this - the stickons are as close as dammit to pure lead - I use stickons for my 58 minnies. Seems to work fine. Never tested them for hardness as they are way softer than WWs.

[Wicky]

Grumpyone, never thought of the twist test - shall try that wth the next lot I pick up, thats if the young bloke will get them for me!! Otherwise I get picky and just take the clipons.

[Junior1942]

I got 10 BHN on my batch of stick on ww alloy. The fingernail test said it's a little harder than pure lead and a little softer than regular wws. Danged if the Lee BHN tester didn't say about the same thing....

[runfiverun]

heard there was some tin in them

[Alchemist]

heard there was some tin in them

I've got two boxes of new stick-ons and the box says "Contains lead and antimony"...no tin, at least in the ones I have. There is no percentage info listed, either.

[DLCTEX]

Seems to depend on maker and maybe even batch. I got some zinc ones sent to me to do an experiment with. When I first saw the stick-ons I thought they wouldn't be zinc, but they are. DALE

[compass will]

About 1/3 of my stick on wheel weights are zinc. Do the "side cutter test". If you can't cut it, it don't go in the pot.

[Huntducks]

Most of the newer stick on one last few years I have run across are zinc, the older one's are lead.