55 cents per lb. wheel weights

[Arceagle]

Found a local source today that sells clip on wheel weights for 55 cents per lb, is that too high? I'm going to go ahead and get a couple of hundred lbs from him tomorrow and see what kind of yield I get but it would have to be pretty good to be cheaper than buying from other members on this forum. I would have the fun of spending hours sorting and smelting them myself however.

My lead stash since I started last December is about 100 lbs of recycled range lead purchased from members, 100 lbs of coww from my father in law who had a station in the early 80's and about 60 lbs of pure lead from various sources. I also have about 40 lbs of melted cast bullets from various commercial casters accumulated from 30+ years of reloading. I also bought 100 lbs. of chilled magnum hard birdshot.

I have all but given up on buying any coww directly from tire shops. Any way back to my reason for the question about price. This source has a 55 gallon steel drum full of coww he is selling what I don't buy now to someone else by the end of the week. Is it worth a gamble without knowing the yeild to buy all I can get before these are gone. He said that this is over 2 years accumulation of him buying this lead for resale.

[odfairfaxsub]

its a steep price if you ask me and i pay around 50 dollars a full bucket if they are too hard which is too much too.

[winchester85]

local recycle place buys lead for 30 cents. so i asked them what they would sell for. 40 cents they said. they had a few hundred pounds of mostly stick on weights. but the tub was straight out of a tire shop, complete with valve stems, lug nuts, a spark plug, etc... they also had some pure lead roof jacks.
i have been collecting bullets and smelting it into ingots for later use. i dont even cast bullets yet, so i am still just accumulating lead for trading purposes at this point. once i get set up to smelt in larger quantities i may be into buying lead. or should i be buying stick on weights at 40 cents?

[IIJSavoy]

odfairfaxsub

Where in Fairfax County do you find $50 buckets. I tried one shop near Ft. Belvoir and the owner wanted $200 for an old grease bucket full (not even the size of a $5 gallon). Not really asking for your source, but with WW being harder to find...

Looking at $0.55/lb for a bucket full might not be bad assuming about 100lbs in a 5-gallon bucket, it is really just $5 more

[DrCaveman]

I'd be thrilled with that price here in Oregon, but with the caveat that I push them to assure me they are 'mostly lead'. I spent a good hour at my local tire dealer with a pair of side cutters testing each weight before it went in my bucket the first time I was buying. The percentage was pretty good so I just dumped in the rest. Upon getting home, I found quite a few zinc ww, but not enough to feel ripped off.

This was paying $.75 per pound. The next time, I told him about the rejects (not to mention rust/crud) and he threw in another 10-15%. Seems that he was happy for a repeat customer.

Sounds like your situation is a bit different, but maybe you can persuade him to throw in a few more pounds if he can't assure they are all lead. It is probably not wise to make one who casts their own bullets feel like they have been severely wronged.

[Tatume]

You can buy wheelweight metal smelted into ingots and shipped to your door, right here on this forum. I've bought metal from several people, and all of it was clean and ready to cast.

[ku4hx]

If you assume you get 100 pounds of usable alloy, for 230 grain boolits that works out to something on the order of $.02 per boolit. Not the absolute lowest cost but still a very low cost on a per boolit basis when you look at commercial offerings. Compared to jacketed it's a steal.

[Beau Cassidy]

Price versus availability. I would say buy all you can while you can. I don't see where 5 cents a lb. would break anyone's bank. That is only $5 more per hundred lb.

[Sasquatch-1]

Found a local source today that sells clip on wheel weights for 55 cents per lb, is that too high? I'm going to go ahead and get a couple of hundred lbs from him tomorrow and see what kind of yield I get but it would have to be pretty good to be cheaper than buying from other members on this forum. I would have the fun of spending hours sorting and smelting them myself however.

Will he let you pick and chose through the drum of weights r do you have to just take a couple of buckets that he gives you. If he lets you pick through them that sounds like a real good price to me. If you have the time you could take the most select weights and leave the rest for the other guy.

[bbs70]

In my area the last time I checked at the scrap yard lead went for .80 a lb.
I've bought ww and other lead scrap before from scrap yards and tire dealers.

With all the clips from the ww, trash, lug nuts, razor blades,etc, you are paying lead prices for trash.
Then there is seperating it all down and smelting it.
I don't mind the work of smelting but I hate to pay for unusable trash that comes with the scrap.

For the price of ingots here on CastBoolits, it is worth buying it here.

[Arceagle]

I got to the shop this morning at 0900 and his buyer was there loading everything up with a forklift. I panicked and bought 3 buckets full that totaled just shy of 450 lb. I also bought 100 lb of pure lead he had in plates and cable sheathing. in the 100 lbs stack he also had some very soft lead wire (about 10 lbs) looked like good stuff.

What they were loading on the truck was enough to make you cry. It wasn't just 1 full drum it was 4 - 30 gallon drums and a whole pallet stacked with 5 gal buckets all WWs and about 8 pallets of various types of pure lead. Some of the lead plates were from a nearby hospital that got hit by a tornado a few years back. I don't know what all had already been put in the truck but they were shoveling WWs off the ground into a 55 gal drum from another drum that had fallen thru a pallet while trying to load it.

No telling where all this good lead is going to eventually end up.

[fredj338]

If they are mostly lead, a fair price indeed. Those that are spoiled & have access to cheap or free may think it's high, but going forward, you are gong to wish you bought every one of those for 55c/#.

[mpmarty]

I pay $50.00 for a full five gallon bucket of clip on weights. The tire shop even loads them into my pickup for me. I have weighed one and it went a bit over 125 lbs.

[Beau Cassidy]

Like I said, price versus availability. Its economics. You delayed in your decision and it cost you more lead than you were able to get. A decision based on a few cents a lb. Now how much is it going to cost to get more lead and how long will it take to get it? When I find a supply at a reasonable price there is no question I will buy it. It is more expensive not to buy it than buy it.

[JeffinNZ]

If you assume you get 100 pounds of usable alloy, for 230 grain boolits that works out to something on the order of $.02 per boolit. Not the absolute lowest cost but still a very low cost on a per boolit basis when you look at commercial offerings. Compared to jacketed it's a steal.

+1 to this. Wake up. Lead is getting expensive. If you don't buy the scrap dealer will. The days of super cheap or free WW are long gone.

[Love Life]

I have smelted only two 5 gallon buckets of wheel weights down. Between the sorting and the nasty funky smell of smelting I much prefer to buy my casting material for a dollar a pound shipped. You won't have any competition from me!

As for price I think it was fair.

[cf_coder]

Awww... stinky stuff in the smelt don't matter. Throw a lid on it and smelt on a breezy day.

[odfairfaxsub]

odfairfaxsub

Where in Fairfax County do you find $50 buckets. I tried one shop near Ft. Belvoir and the owner wanted $200 for an old grease bucket full (not even the size of a $5 gallon). Not really asking for your source, but with WW being harder to find...

Looking at $0.55/lb for a bucket full might not be bad assuming about 100lbs in a 5-gallon bucket, it is really just $5 more

haha its a place near my shop that i work at in ffx. the only way i made a arrangment with the guy was i had something he really wanted (not of the peverse varity) and he agreed to get me a sweet price on ww. he sells them for 40 dollars a bucket. places in wv jeff county would only sell to me for market price i told them haha yeah right buddy go ahead and let the scrap guy give that to you sike.

[newton]

Free or even "cheap" lead is long gone. I have called around to local scrap recyclers and they won't sell what they take in. Seems weird to me. I have sought out tire places and they have a system in place for their used weights. Went by one shop and he said he reused everything, but then he took me to a 3 gallon(?) bucket 1/3 full and said $20 bucks.

Then last but not least I stopped by another shop that said yea, we just put them on a trailer with all the other metal. But when we went to the back a employee said they just gave away a 5 gal bucket to this guy. I politely told hey he owner I was willing to pay for them and she took down my number. Said she gets a bucket full once a month.

Hopefully that pans out, but I might have to pay dearly for them. The scrap yards are up to $.60 a pound now. I'll try to keep the source open, but any way you look at it it's still a whole lot cheaper that j boolits.

[Arceagle]

Well I completed melting the first 150lb. bucket of the 3 I bought at 55 cents per pound. Each 150lb. bucket was $82.50 they had scales and filled the first 2 buckets to an even 150lb. the last bucket had 142lbs. for a total of 442 pounds. Plus I bought 100lbs. of "pure" lead plates and cable sheathing at the same time for 75 cent per pound.

I sorted and smelted the first bucket and ended up with 92lbs of finished clean ingots. That works out to 91.66 cents per pound only slightly better than buying them from other members. I didn't include the stick on wheel weights that I sorted out which are around 15 lbs worth but that is raw weight as I haven't smelted them yet. If I add them in as a full 15 lbs. it would have been 107lbs. for a cost of 77 cents per pound. The other buckets I would guess should work out close to the same but just a few lbs. one way or the other can make a big change in your final cost.

All in all not too bad of a deal even at that price. I got to cast my own ingots with a pretty good idea of what is in them and I'll even have a little pure lead for mixing alloys. Still have 2 full buckets of coww and 100lbs. of "pure" lead I bought to melt but the hunt is half the fun.