What % of your WW becomes castable lead??

[aeronc]

WW in my area are $.50/pound. I can buy lead on ebay for approx $1.00/pound. I understand it will vary depending on amount of zinc or non usable ww in each batch, but what is you estimate of the actual amount of lead that is usable per pound of WW???? thanks

[Dale53]

I've been fortunate. My ww's have produced approximately 85% actual weight after smelting. In kind of "depends"...

Dale53

[copdills]

about 85 %

[putteral]

Wheel weights here on the nature coast cost me .45 per pound if I can find them. I would agree with 85% or so

[Willbird]

85-90 in my limited testing :-)

[aeronc]

Thanks to all.

[badgeredd]

85% + has been what I get. At $0.25/pound, that works out to just under 30 cents a pound for the finished lead.

One problem with the ebay lead that I have heard of is it MAY be contaminated if it is in ingots. A friend got some that had zinc in it, which didn't hurt him much because he was making fishing weights, but................... Also you really don't know what is in the ingots as far as alloy goes. I guess what I am trying to say, is that you might want to be careful buying from ebay. Check the feed back and watch to see who is selling regulaly. I'm sure there are some there that really pay attention to their end product, and a few that don't.

My 2 cents......

Edd

[jleneave]

I usually get about 80% usable lead from wheel weights.

Jody

[johnly]

Just melted down 44 pounds of bulk wheelweights this afternoon. I'll weigh all the ingots and let you know.

I put a thermocouple in the dutch oven and kept the temperature under 650F and is looks like the zinc wheelweights didn't melt and just floated to the surface along with the clips. I'll assay the lead tomorrow and see what the zinc content is.

John

[Seafarer12]

I get about 75 to 80. It's not worth it to me to fool with them unless they are dirt cheap. I can usually pick up pure lead for about the same price as wheel weights are going for around here.

[Chunky Monkey]

Yep I'm in the ballpark. [smilie=w: I got 132lbs of ingots out of 151lbs of WW (87%).

[johnly]

Today's batch came in at 84%.

John

[mooman76]

Mine have been right at 90% every time I checked. I guess mine been pretty clean and I wring out every drop of lead!

[superior]

I get ww for free but about 20% of them are zinc. I dont mind sorting them out because I have an unlimited supply.

[johnly]

I put a thermocouple in my pot when I melted today's batch. I kept the temperature at or under 650F and all the zinc weights were floating on top of the alloy along with the clips. Getting a thermocouple might be an easier way to seperate the zinc weights that sorting them by hand.

John

[Bret4207]

I never thought about it, but would have to guess at least 80-85% or more. I don't throw away much out of each batch of WW I smelt down.

[Wayne Smith]

I put a thermocouple in my pot when I melted today's batch. I kept the temperature at or under 650F and all the zinc weights were floating on top of the alloy along with the clips. Getting a thermocouple might be an easier way to seperate the zinc weights that sorting them by hand.

John

Last time I melted my pot I tried to keep it around 650 by keeping a thermocouple in it. Much to my amazement I discovered that my surface temp was barely above melting while the temp at the bottom of the pot was above 650! I too have checked for zinc by monitoring temps when melting, but I didn't realize how much the top to bottom differential was in a Lyman cast iron stove top pot. It may not be as reliable as we would like it to be.

[MoldyJoe]

Stupid question, but how can you tell the difference by looking between Zinc and Pb? I am sure there is s weight difference, but most of my WW is oxidized. Joe

[badgeredd]

Moldy Joe,

First, it isn't a stupid question.

I have found that a good many of the Zn WW have "ZN" on them, somewhere. Usually on the front surface and to the right of the center. I recently got a batch of scrap WW that had quite a few stick-ons that were Zinc. At least 90% had Zn on them. NOW......before someone jumps on this, some zink WW are NOT marked! That is why everyone who has been doing it for a while keeps their smelted metal down to about 650 degrees by using a thermometer, because the zinc will not melt and it'll float on top. I've been saving the zinc weights because now the scrap zinc is bringing about the same as the lead weights. An old standby here is "if in doubt, throw it out" which I think is sound advice.

Zinc is a lot harder than the lead WW so if you do as Randyrat suggested, and try cutting the edge of any that may be suspect with dikes (side cutters), you'll immediately notice the difference. Also zinc won't bend or mash nearly as easily as lead. Just be careful if you aren't sure and keep the temps in the 600 to 650 range.

Hope this helped you.

Edd

[idahoron]

I got a free bucket of WW's today. They had 5 pounds of lead stick on's and 3 pounds of stick on's that floated. I got 30 pounds of lead clamp on's and the rest of the bucket was floating and I skimmed them off but I didn't weigh the bucket. I assume that the floaters were zinc and steel? I also kept the lead on the cool side to skim off the crap WW's.
I tested the ingots today for hardness. The stick on's were about 9 BHN, the clamp on's were 11.5 BHN. I used a cabin tree tester to do the testing. Ron

[johnly]

Last time I melted my pot I tried to keep it around 650 by keeping a thermocouple in it. Much to my amazement I discovered that my surface temp was barely above melting while the temp at the bottom of the pot was above 650! I too have checked for zinc by monitoring temps when melting, but I didn't realize how much the top to bottom differential was in a Lyman cast iron stove top pot. It may not be as reliable as we would like it to be.

Lead wheelwheights melt at less than 600F, so there is plenty margin to keep the zinc weights from melting into the mix even at 650F as they melt at 787F. I used a thermocouple mounted in a 1/16" SST housing and immersed it to the point it was contacting the bottom of the pot.

The zinc level in the last batch of wheelweights came in at ~300 ppm or 0.03% and there were zinc wheelweights in the raw material material added to the melting pot.


John

[randyrat]

The difference in melt temp is exactly why i stir before the whole pot is melted. Stirring evens out the heat from top to bottom so i don't have 787 degs on the bottom, cooler towards the top and end up melting Zink in the batch.
I've never had a problem skimming zink WWs off a batch or i've never had Zink get in any of my batches of ingots. I've skimmed my share of Zink WWs.
BTW i've never used a thermometer.
Now is there a problem stirring as i do? So far i've noticed none.