Wheel weight SCORE!!!

[lightman]

What a score! That should firmly place you in the "Lifetime Supply Club"! That would surely motivate me to build a large natural gas fired bottom pour smelting pot.

[montanamike]

Got it all in the shed. Gonna take awhile to melt it all down...

[aephilli822]

dayum......


(green for jealous)

[Tripplebeards]

I've been managing auto centers and tire shops for over 25 years now. When I first started in the early nineties, the pales were 100 percent all lead WW , no zink or steel. Now a days WW lead composition is a lot softer and three quarters(or more) of the pales capicity consists of zinc and steel. It's depressing to see how little lead you end up with per pale when all said and done. If you casters need a helpful searching tip head to your local Sears auto center if it hasn't closed yet. Just closed my location down and ended up with litteraly a ton of brand new, unused, lead wheel weights from the late 70's, early eighties when WW were a lot harder composition. The newer powder coated lead WW are made softer. My locations battery room had a double sheet of approx 30'x 10' 100 percent soft lead pan flooring to keep battery acid from eating the floor when they use to assemble batteries? I ended up tearing it out. Alot of the centers that are closing still have pales of WW sitting in their shops that no one picked up that they need to get rid of. you are able to put buy bids on the wheel weights and what ever else is left in the shop for that matter. I ended up with a lifetime of lead from just the last week alone but never really worried about it since I've been in the business so long that if I ever needed lead I'd grab a bucket of WW. Just had one of my techs from years past stop by today watching me melt some of my large chunks of scrap and told me they have a 5' tall pale in his current shop that is full of WW they can't get rid of and offered them to me. Maybe I'm blessed but there has always been free WW lead for the taking in about three shops in my area any time I need it. It blows my mind to see that people can't find,pay,and fight over the stuff.

I can save you smelters some the next time you get a pale of used WW. Once there is about an inch or so of lead melted in you pan put a handful of WW in with them. Immediately stir them around two or three times. By that time the lead WWs melt leaving the WW clips, zink,and steel WW floating on the top. Skim off the floaters right away and your good to go. Never contaminated my lead with zink to date yet with this process and saves tons of time sorting them. Have done it both ways and handful dropped in and mixed for a few seconds saves a lot of time than sorting by far.

[RP]

Adding WWs to melted lead will save time on sorting its getting the lead off the ceiling that takes forever the cement floor is not as bad. It seems no matter how long I leave a bucket of WWs sitting in the shop to make sure they are fully dry there is some water still trapped in them. I would strongly advise some sort of preheat of the WWs to ensure there is no water and wear the correct safety gear.

[Tripplebeards]

Adding WWs to melted lead will save time on sorting its getting the lead off the ceiling that takes forever the cement floor is not as bad. It seems no matter how long I leave a bucket of WWs sitting in the shop to make sure they are fully dry there is some water still trapped in them. I would strongly advise some sort of preheat of the WWs to ensure there is no water and wear the correct safety gear.

Good point. Mine have normally sat around for years before I need or melt them accept for this time around. I have used a benzene torche to heat them up in the past before adding to remove moisture.

[The Dar]

I pour ingots with a ladle until I have about 1/2" left in the dutch oven. Turn off the heat, wait 10 to 15 minutes, time varies. When a sludge forms on the surface from cooling I fill the pot with WW's and relight the burner. Still enough heat in the lead to melt again quickly and gives any moisture in the added WW's time to steam off.