picking out zinc wheelweights?

[RogerDat]

I just hope you're not doing this in your house because the buckets I pickup contain so much junk, dirt and crud I would have to hire carpet cleaners or replace carpet!

My "source" buckets are out in the garage. I use a canvas or poly tarp drop cloth over cardboard to set the collection buckets on. I go out to garage and fetch a batch in my lap tray from the buckets, tossing the "trash" at that time.

I generally only stay set up for a couple or three hours, clean up and clear out. Wife doesn't have time to get too bothered. With streaming video and Wi-Fi it may be just as easy to work in the garage or basement now. Wife has added a nice area rug recently and I have a feeling I would be pushing my luck to set up on it. I don't know about saint but she does tolerate me more than I would tolerate me.

The cleaned up and cleared out as soon as I finish is a sacred thing, especially if I don't want to have to sleep with one eye open for a week

Lead will continue to decline. Cars are an international commodity. Europe doesn't allow lead, some US states don't allow lead. No manufacturer is going to assemble with lead WW's since the vehicle could end up where they are banned. All the WW's I see that are lead are coming from used cars on at least the second set of tires. Tires installed by a shop not the dealer. The tire shops still use them, so the second and third set of tires might have lead WW's the new ones? Not a chance.

[poppy42]

A Pair of side cutters or scrape across some concrete will quickly let you know which ones are zinc and which ones are lead. Lead is much much much softer than zinc and you’d really have to squeeze pretty darn hard on a pair of side cutters to even leave a dent in zinc wheel weights. The same is true about rubbing them on concrete zinc will show little or no effect. The steel ones are so blatantly obvious I could tell just by looking at em. To use a magnet or check with acid is way too time-consuming for me. And as far as acid goes, if you Use acid you then have to worry about handling them with acid on them. Maybe it’s just me but I don’t find it that big a deal to sort through A couple of buckets of wheel weights. I Sort through three or four 5 gallon buckets Of wheel weights in way less than an hour.

[ulav8r]

I have used a magnet similar to this. Spread the weights on the driveway and pass the magnet over them, picking up several at a time. Pulling the release handle drops them where you want. It will pick up a few small lead or zinc weights that have steel clips. The lead is easy to pick out by sight if you dont dump them in a pile. This is after picking out obvious trash but before starting looking at individual weights.

[Budzilla 19]

I sort them by sight, and any suspect ones get pinched with a set of side cutter pliers!Steel and trash goes in a bucket for the scrap yard,I save the zn weights, melt them down, flux them and pour up in small ingots to use later to harden lead by adding a certain amount. I got the ratio from a member here named Run5Run. I was going to step on the gas with some .30 caliber 170 grain in a 30-06, he helped me with the ratios of zinc to add.

[Gatch]

I sort them by sight, and any suspect ones get pinched with a set of side cutter pliers!Steel and trash goes in a bucket for the scrap yard,I save the zn weights, melt them down, flux them and pour up in small ingots to use later to harden lead by adding a certain amount. I got the ratio from a member here named Run5Run. I was going to step on the gas with some .30 caliber 170 grain in a 30-06, he helped me with the ratios of zinc to add.

You use zinc to harden lead ? This seems the opposite to almost everything I've read on this forum.