Cleaning of stick on wheel weights

[Gatch]

I hit a local tire shop on friday and nabbed about 70-80kg of mostly stick on wheel weights. I live in suburbia, my back yard is probably smaller than a lot of you blokes reloading rooms. So I am reluctant to just throw the soww in the pot and let the sticky backing just burn off, as my neighbours lounges and kitchens are within literally 10-20m of where I can use my pot.

So, has anyone tried and had any success with cleaning the double sided tape off the back of the lead ? I've currently got a few kg soaking in petrol to see if it will dissolve it off. Though I dont see this working large scale.

[MrWolf]

I used a bunch of old acetone and mineral spirits in a bucket with lid. Dumped everything in and let it sit for a few days. Make sure everything is covered. Opened the lid and all the adhesive and paper was totally off. They were pretty clean after that. Good luck.

[Froogal]

My first thought was to just throw it in the pot and burn it off, but that DOES make a LOT of smoke. I can do that here, but my nearest neighbor is a good 1/4 mile away. Mineral spirits can be a very friend and has very little odor. Acetone should be used only with plenty of ventilation.

[lightman]

Soaking them in a bucket of degreaser should work. I probably would use gasoline but be careful if you do. I'm thankful that I have a big yard and can smelt dirty and greasy wheel weights without worry. Lighting the smoke reduces it quite a bit but the stink is still there.

[Silvercreek Farmer]

A weed burning torch applied to the top of the melt is hot enough to burn off most of the smoke and stench. I do get a little when I stop the torching to skim. Placing the skimmings in a container with a fairly tight lid, reduces the smoke down to just a few minutes. Do it when most people are gone.

[Winger Ed.]

I do nasty smelling stuff when its cold and real late at night.
That way the neighbors are asleep, and all their windows are closed.

[Gatch]

A weed burning torch applied to the top of the melt is hot enough to burn off most of the smoke and stench. I do get a little when I stop the torching to skim. Placing the skimmings in a container with a fairly tight lid, reduces the smoke down to just a few minutes. Do it when most people are gone.

I thought it would come to this. I thought about throwing a few nuggets of wood in to encourage some fire. It'll all scoop out.

I left some soaking in petrol overnight, so I'll see how well it's worked when I get home from the range tonight.

Failing the petrol working, my lady is away tomorrow night so I could a whack at melting it down tomorrow..

[xfire]

get your self some cans of non carbonated brake clean spray works for me to remove double stick tape spray it on & use a small scraper

[ghh3rd]

Go do it at a friends house (-:

[skeettx]

Go to Fisherman Island and wait for a Westerly wind

[MrWolf]

I built my smelting station that uses the lid from a weber grill. Really cuts the smoke down. Forgot to mention I actually combined a couple different solvents (yea I know but was outside away from house) and just let it soak. I really was impressed with how clean they came out.

[Gatch]

So the stick on weights I left in petrol overnight clean up easy. The glue is softened to the point you can just wipe the rubber backing off. This is good. I'll do the rest like this and have a relatively smokefree melt in the next few days.

[fredj338]

So the stick on weights I left in petrol overnight clean up easy. The glue is softened to the point you can just wipe the rubber backing off. This is good. I'll do the rest like this and have a relatively smokefree melt in the next few days.

This is what I do as well. Acetone is expensive here, so soaked in gasoline for a couple hours, everything wipes off.

[JWFilips]

Any proper smelting procedure produces a lot of smoke ( If you are smelting correctly!) The best method of cleaning them is to throw them in a smelting pot a flux the heck out of them with pine saw dust. What is the procedure for a good clean smelt & good clean ingots

[Gatch]

Any proper smelting procedure produces a lot of smoke ( If you are smelting correctly!) The best method of cleaning them is to throw them in a smelting pot a flux the heck out of them with pine saw dust. What is the procedure for a good clean smelt & good clean ingots

If I had plenty of space I would do just that. But my backyard is tiny and my neighbours live too close to make big smoke clouds like that.

[Peregrine]

As much as I enjoy what we do I definetly would not be smelting in a suburban backyard and would be less than pleased if my neighbor were doing so in the context you described. Especially if I had children I'd be having some very strong words with them.

Do you have any friends who live out of town? How friendly are you with the owners of your range, could you smelt there?

Barring all that in your situation I'd just buy already processed lead from some of the members here for a price so reasonable it's hard to justify not doing so when you consider the effort involved and where you are at.

I wouldn't be playing with wheel weight if I didn't have a place to do it well away from others where my fumes can diffuse into the swamp, saving a few bucks is not worth exposing people to the very poisonous and harmful byproducts we create. Willingly taking the risk yourself is one thing, exposing other to it for your gain is something else completely.

Sorry to be a buzz kill but I think you need to rethink what you are doing.

[JWFilips]

As An Aussi..... Fire up the Barbi! Put plent of wood on it ....! The set up your Smelting set up! You can mak good clean ingot without smoke! I have posted the two articles a number of times here over the years: This is the Mantra of good bullet casting!
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Best Explination of Fluxing Ever!
Boolit casters typically use dirty, contaminated scrap from whatever source we can scrounge up, and that sort of stuff needs special attention to make the best boolits. Clean alloy like nuclear medicine shields or foundry alloy doesn't require as much cleaning.

We need to do three things to our alloy: Clean, reduce oxides, and flux.

Cleaning is accomplished by mechanical action, stirring and skimming dirt, sand, steel clips, rust flakes, copper jackets, whatever. A slotted spoon is adequate.

Oxide reduction is next. We need to deal with the oxide dross formation on top of the metal, whether in smelting pot, or a freshly-melted casting pot full of clean ingots. Boolit alloy dross is very rich in valuable tin, so we need to turn it back into useable metal rather than skim and toss it. The opposite of oxidation is a chemical process called "reduction", so if we induce a reduction/oxidation reaction on top of the metal, we can save the scum. Combustion is a redox reaction. Anything that will burn will trade electrons with the oxidized metal, sort of "stealing" the oxygen and freeing the tin and other metals from the scum so they go back into the alloy. Grease, wax, oil, sawdust, anything like that will work to reduce oxides, and if your alloy is clean of other contaminating metals waxes work fine for this job.

Now, about Fluxing. This is the part that seems to confuse everyone. If your alloy came from wheel weights or other dirty scrap, it likely contains a bunch of other metals that don't cast very well and mess up the flow, or FLUX, of the alloy. This makes it tough to cast good boolits. Things we want to get rid of are zinc, aluminum, iron, calcium, and a few others. Since what we want to get rid of is all pretty much more difficult to reduce than lead, tin, and antimony, we can remove it through adsorption. With a "d". Things that work really well at removing the oxides of contaminating metals are molten borate glass and the carbohydrates in wood. Wax won't do it. The problem with borates (such as Marvellux) is that they don't reduce any of the oxides at all, including tin, they just adsorb them and remove them from the alloy. If you want to save your tin/antimony/bismuth/lead oxides, use sawdust because it saves the good stuff and adsorbs the bad stuff so it can be skimmed and thrown away with the ash when it has finished burning.

So again, sawdust, being a hydrocarbon, will also reduce tin/lead/antimony oxides we want to save while adsorbing the remainder of the junk we want to remove and capturing it in the ash. Two for one, so to speak. Resiny, pine sawdust, particularly sappy yellow pine, is one of the best reducant/fluxes I have ever used because the resin is such a fine and quick sacrificial reducant, quickly reducing the good stuff so it won't get adsorbed, but leaving the oxidized trash metals for the carbon to soak up as the wood chars.

Sawdust and ash cannot get below the surface of the melt and cause problems unless you drag it down there physically so that it gets trapped below the surface tension of the alloy at the bottom of the pot. Carrying ash down there on the end of a fresh ingot, a handful of sprues, or by scratching around on the bottom of the pot with a wooden stick are the principle ways of getting ash junk on the bottom where it will migrate to the spout and cause inclusions in the boolits. Use common sense and it won't happen. A wood stick is the bee's knees for scraping all the stuck, baked dross off the sides of the casting pot, it reduces oxides on contact.

Gear

_______________

From Duke in Main Now in Florida!
Here goes..... I am VERY fussy with my ingots. From the sounds of it, I would NOT WANT some of the ingots that some of you produce. Not clean enough for my guns.

Here's the basis for how I do it: I want as close to PURE alloy as I can get. NO GRIT remaining. NONE. Every bit of grit that you allow to enter an ingot becomes abrasive that wears out your barrel. At a commercial lead processing plant, they use very expensive ceramic filters that get all grit out. We hobby smelters can't afford the expensive ceramic filters, so we have to FLUX like crazy to get the lead as clean as possible.

So, here's my system:

1) I always leave the last inch of molten lead in the pot from the previous smelt. I allow that to cool, and mark what it is, with a Sharpie. Next time I smelt that alloy, I put that disk back in the pot, which maintains 100% contact with the smelting pot, and therefore melts fast, giving me a good lead puddle for the boolits/range lead to melt into. If you skip that step, the edges of the range lead have little contact with the smelting pot, and will take longer to start melting.

2) I add a couple of inches of range lead into the pot, and allow that to come up to temperature and melt. I DO NOT fill up the smelting pot........ To do so would introduce too much copper jackets and other debris that needs to get skimmed off. I do my adding in layers, and that goes very fast. Add/Skim/Add/Skim, etc. Continue adding and skimming the big stuff off the top until you have a pot pretty full. The previous comment about the strength of the stand is worth paying attention to. One summer day a couple of year ago, I was smelting 200 pound batches and was horrified when I noticed that the stand leg had started to sink into the hot top, and the stand was dangerously leaning. I had to be very careful to not knock it over while fluxing. Once you have a safe pot full of molten lead, with only the BIG STUFF skimmed off, it's time to start fluxing.

3) The fluxing is the process or technique for separating the grit and other small debris from the metal. You want to end up with as clean a metal as you can, for the sake of the longer life of your guns. The lead is not only heavy, but very dense. The larger stuff that you skimmed off had enough flotation ability to float itself to the surface. The smaller grit does NOT have enough flotation to push itself easily through the dense metal. That's what the fluxing techniques does........ it opens pathways through the dense metal for the small grit to make it's way to the surface.

4) Stirring and the addition of fluxing agents assists with making pathways. It also, and this is an important aspect of fluxing........... it also provides "bonding agents" for the small grit particles to stick and adhere to, clumping them into bigger pieces, for easier removal. So, stirring with anything, a metal spoon, a wooden stick.... when done correctly, will open eddy currents (think whirlpool action) that will allow the grit to make it's way to the top for skimming. And, agents like sappy pine, motor oil, pine sticks (dual purpose), old candle wax, parrafin wax, etc act as perfect fluxing agents for the other part of the fluxing action. Pine saw dust is just about one of the best fluxing agents you could use. It's sappy enough to provide the sap agent that allows the grit to stick to it. And, the small particle size assists with creating nice pathways to the surface, when stirred into whirlpools through the lead. Hard wood saw dust isn't as good, but better than nothing. Get bales of pine sawdust at your local feed and grain store. They use it as horse bedding. You could also use pine shavings, but it's not quite as good as pine sawdust.

5) I grab a handful of pine sawdust, and toss it onto the surface of the molten lead. I use a stainless steel slotted spoon with a long handle (bbq type spoon) and start stirring right away. I stir right to the bottom of the pot, pulling up all the grit I can from the bottom. Keep stirring.... The sawdust will eventually become charcoal, and will soon burn into ash. You want to skim the charcoal and all the grey powder grit that floats to the top off the lead with the edge of your spoon, before it turns to ash. Go slow with moving the edge of the spoon through the lead, and you will see that it's easy to pick up the skimmed material. Pull it slowly towards the edge of the pot, and turn your wrist, and you'll see the grit (grey powder) in the spoon. When you are done with the initial sawdust flux, the top surface of the lead should be somewhat shiny. However, the lower portions of the lead are still nasty! I do this sawdust flux about 4-5 times, or until I start to see dramatic reductions in the amount of grit I am picking off the surface. For some really sandy range lead, I have been known to flux with the pine sawdust as many as 10 times before moving to the next step. Be as fussy as you want to be. It's your lead! And, your guns!

6) Once I have achieved some level of cleanness with the pine saw dust fluxing, I switch over to paraffin wax, which is finer agent, and will get more of the smaller particles out. Old candles are always plentiful. Yard sales are a great place to get them for almost free. I cut them into peanut sized pieces, and toss a piece onto the top of the molten lead. The candle wax will start to melt, and then, because of it's lower flame point, will burst into flame. Be aware it will happen, and don't get startled. The paraffin will consume itself almost completely (no ash), so be sure to stir whirlpools aggressively as soon as you can. Skim off whatever grit that develops, and repeat as many times as you feel that you need to to get to as clean as you'd like. I like to flux with paraffin wax 4-5 times. By then, the metal is pretty darn clean by my fussy standards. (including the pot surfaces, which I have been scraping the whole time)......

7) When using your ladle to remove the lead from the smelting pot, push the ladle through the surface of the lead, and allow the ladle to "back fill" with only shiny metal. Even though you have done this immense amount of fluxing, you will always see some additional crud floating to the surface as you ladle, and you want to avoid introducing that into the ingots you are making. The back filling technique with the ladle is the best way to keep the grit out of the ingots you are making. When you get to a point where the grit really starts to be a nuisance, and it will...... do some more paraffin fluxing.........

8) Continue making ingots until you get down to that 1" or so of lead left in the pot, and stop. Or, if you have more to smelt, stop making ingots when you have a couple of inches of lead still in the pot. That will give you the good lead puddle for melting.

Notes: Some folks have used motor oil as a fluxing agent. I have used it in tests and find it smelly and full of carcinogens. It works OK, but I still prefer to use the candle or store bought paraffin wax. The store bought version is usually sold in the jam making supplies area of the store. Comes in a one pound package of four blocks, and is very pure, and translucent clear. It's more expensive than cheap used candles. I'm already saving money making my own boolits, and I feel no compulsion to go extra cheap on fluxing agents. I want/demand very highly clean lead to run through my guns. Don't be in a hurry when smelting. It's hard on the back, and hot on a summers day. I find that by pacing myself in a slower pace, I get better alloy because I am taking care to flux well. You cannot flux alloy too much.......... You just can't. The more, the better/cleaner the alloy will be. By constantly stirring, you will keep any tin and antimony in the mix. You can't really skim out those metals, nor do you want to. However, if you stop stirring aggressively, and perhaps have the heat too high, you will allow the tin and antimony to come out of solution with the lead, where it will float to the surface in it's typical yellow/gold and purple hues. Don't skim off the yellow/golds or the purples. Turn the heat down a bit, and stir those back into the lead.

My advice has been primarily relating to range lead because that's what you asked about. The same process is used when I smelt clip on wheel weights. However, it's especially important to add weights slowly to the molten puddle to avoid accidentally melting in any zinc to the pot. Zinc will float, but only if you have added a thin enough layer to allow them to float. If you bury zinc weights under 60 pounds of lead weights, and have the pot too hot, you will get zinc contamination. So, my advice for adding new material to the pot slowly and in thin layers holds true whether for range lead or for wheel weights.

I've touched on many of the points that others have made, but I don't think anyone else has covered it as completely, in one place as I have. My system isn't perfect, but it works really well for me. I get good clean alloy. And, I know my bores (barrels) will have longer lives from the extra trouble I take getting the clean alloy.

Perhaps this post/thread might make a good sticky. I'd be happy to amend my post should anyone think of anything additional idea that would improve my system even more. We have many great casters here. And their system works for them. I take no exception to any of that. However, in my quest for CLEAN alloy, my system gets me there.

[Gatch]

As much as I enjoy what we do I definetly would not be smelting in a suburban backyard and would be less than pleased if my neighbor were doing so in the context you described. Especially if I had children I'd be having some very strong words with them.

Do you have any friends who live out of town? How friendly are you with the owners of your range, could you smelt there?

Barring all that in your situation I'd just buy already processed lead from some of the members here for a price so reasonable it's hard to justify not doing so when you consider the effort involved and where you are at.

I wouldn't be playing with wheel weight if I didn't have a place to do it well away from others where my fumes can diffuse into the swamp, saving a few bucks is not worth exposing people to the very poisonous and harmful byproducts we create. Willingly taking the risk yourself is one thing, exposing other to it for your gain is something else completely.

Sorry to be a buzz kill but I think you need to rethink what you are doing.

I appreciate the sentiment however I don't agree. I'm yet to see evidence that people in the next yard are in any danger. The only reason I'm taking the time to clean the lead is to reduce the smell and smoke. I wear a respirator but I'm sitting within a few feet of the pot. Here's a copy/paste of someones advice regarding lead:

Guys,



It is agreed that lead when it enters you body is universally bad. However, melting lead should not create lead fumes. Lead melts at 621 degrees Fahrenheit and boils at 3182 degrees Fahrenheit. There is no reason to ever heat lead up to the boiling point to pour sinkers.



Your most likely route of entry will be through ingestion (swallowing) or inhalation of inorganic lead particles or through transdermal (through your skin) absorption of organic alkyl lead.



Your respiratory tract provides the most effective route of absorption because it only depends on the size of lead particles and the metabolic activity of the body. Airborne lead particles that are less than 0.5-1 microns in diameter generally are completely absorbed. Gastrointestinal absorption of lead is less effective and depends on a number of factors, eg, the presence of food in the stomach, the concentration of lead ingested and your general nutritional health





What dose this mean?



It means that you are most likely to put lead into your body when to have some lead dust on your hands and put it in your mouth (eating, smoking, chapstick, nose picking, etc.). Remember lead dust is lead and does not enjoy being airborne.



There are respirators that can protect you if worn correctly. However, wearing a respirator has risks associated with the increased burden it places on your cardio vascular system. The best protection is to not be exposed at all. Ventilation is primary, and should always be employed.



These filters are called HEPA and are effective against metal fumes and particulates down to 0.3 microns.



IMO the most important thing to understand is that you can take every precaution to protect your self, but still bring the lead dust into your home. Dust that is on your clothing or skin can be transmitted to children, spouses and pets that never came close to the pouring.



Just remember that good housekeeping, personal hygiene and common sense in most cases will keep you and your family safe if you choose to pour lead.

[Peregrine]

The lead isn't the issue here, i'm fully in agreement that the vapor pressure of molten lead is so minute that exposure from sitting in front of a pot of melt even for extended periods of time is non existent. Once you have clean alloy, it's indeed quite safe, unless you happen to spill some on yourself and acquire a burn.

The issue is everything else other than lead that is present when you acquire a bucket of scrap out of a shop. Reread JWFilips post about all of the stuff we want *out* of the alloy and remove by smelting.

He mentions calcium. Do you know what calcium (plenty of it in road salt and it sneaks into wheelweight from sources of other scrap) does in contact with the antimony and arsenic you have in your wheelweight? If you don't look it up, I happened to just make a post about it. The product of the chemistry in question is immediately harmful on the scale of fractions of a part per million and fatal in the double digits there of. hint you'll want to search for arsine and stibine

Then there's the greases, oils, and all types of assorted nastiest that end up on wheel weight from rolling down highways. Many of the clip on wheel weights have a metallic paint on them. The byproducts that are formed when all of that mingles together with the various heavy metals and metal oxides in the pot and breaks down thermally are incredibly, stupidly toxic.

And when your pot is giving off smoke, I can guarantee that the metals and oxides that would normally just sit there in liquid form are adsorbing into the particulate and hitching a ride. We're talking about an entirely different equation than just melting some ingots and casting some boolits.

There's a reason while i'll sit for hours in front of an open pot casting bullets without having any real concern, while i'm smelting wheel-weight as soon as I light the burner i'm well away and downwind until things sort themselves out. I think you'll find most of us here do the same, and are nowhere near the pot while all of this is going on. The whole reason we smelt first instead of just adding stuff right to the casting pot is because the entire business of cleaning up scrap is bad news, and has to be sorted out before we can do the 'clean' part of the job.


I'm not a hippy dippy type in hysteria about a little lead. I do happen to be a chemist, and in any case understand that there are risks to what we do. Risks that I mitigate in large part by cleaning wheel weight up well away from any built up area. It's one thing for me to potentially expose myself to nasties to save me some money, it's another for me to bring those into someones front yard.

[nicholst55]

Barring all that in your situation I'd just buy already processed lead from some of the members here for a price so reasonable it's hard to justify not doing so when you consider the effort involved and where you are at.

So, what do you figure the shipping would be on, say, 60 pounds of lead ingots mailed from the US to Australia? Probably significantly more than the cost of the lead? Not trying to be a wise guy, just thinking this through.