Company Using A New Tire Shop So I Asked...

[jonp]

Our company got a little fed up with the old tire place so started using a new one for our Semi's. They do trucks, heavy equipment like dump trucks and buckets, skidders etc. I stopped in the other day and got to talking with a guy as he was cleaning off my battery terminals.

"Hey, you ever get any wheel weights? The Lead ones"?
"Yeah, sure"
"What do you do with them"?
"Chuck them out in the dump"
"Think you could put them in a bucket and give us a call when it's full"?
"Sure, no problem. You can have all we get"

[MrWolf]

I used to get a full bucket of those cigar sized wheel weights and the guy would even put it in my trunk for me for $20. Dried up to quick though. Good for you.

[Dieselhorses]

Have one tire shop here-every 2 to 3 months I get a full bucket. Lot's of steel though. Around 30% is COWW. But Congrats!

[lightman]

I hope it works out to be a regular source for you. Constantly looking and asking is the way I have built up a supply.

[jonp]

Went by yesterday and picked up about 10lbs of lead goodness.

[David2011]

After culling some buckets I found a lot of big truck weights that were zinc. Bummer. I thought I had the mother load of big WW. Can't complain, though. A friend gave them to me so all I have in them is the time to sort. There were still lots of big truck tire WW in the buckets. They're so nice to melt.

[gnostic]

I'm wondering if we'll see the day when there won't be any lead to cast bullets with? A friend brought me a 50lb. box of wheel weight and about 2/3 of them were either steel or zinc...

[Don1357]

I think is going to be around for a looong time, but it is going to take longer to find. Lead is one of those things a good number of people hoard. Heck the industry moved away from linotype machines close to forty years ago and that stuff is still popping up.

[RogerDat]

I'm wondering if we'll see the day when there won't be any lead to cast bullets with? A friend brought me a 50lb. box of wheel weight and about 2/3 of them were either steel or zinc...

WW's as a source in the scrap stream will vanish for sure. However lead itself won't become unavailable.

Lot of weights and shielding and lining and pipes are lead, they will continue to show up as scrap. Then too there are places such as Rotometals that now offers lead with approx. the same antimony amount as WW's as well as numerous other alloys such as linotype, tin, solder, hardball etc. Case in point hardball cut 50/50 with soft lead from say scrap pipe would be 1/3 Sn/Sb so pretty close to WW + 1% tin.

Foundries will sell lead because they can make money on it. We will end up paying more as scrounging becomes less effective and we are forced to buy sweetener because the the good stuff isn't showing up at scrap yards or tire stores any more. But it won't be unavailable just less cheap lead or free lead available.

I also think in the future one might want to set aside money to allow for larger purchases. When you find something it may be large like a flywheel weight or large lead pipes. And if you get really lucky it will be some barrel of WW's or printing lead and you will want to be able to buy it all. Right now I am comfortable budgeting money for a couple of buckets a month but in the past I would have a few hundred set aside for any big score that came along. Picked up some good deals that way.

I'm hoping to have 2 tons in my stash when I retire in a few years. Have some other stuff to take care of but going to be steadily buying more than I use. Buy it cheap and stack it deep.

[lightman]

I expect that there will be a time when lead will be very scarce. In my casting career I have seen it go from free and plentiful to not free and not so plentiful.

Around where I am, wheel weight scores still have a decent yeild of lead weights. Nor so in many other areas.

Like Roger said, buy it cheap and stack it deep.

[white eagle]

nice score
my collecting days are over
time for me to use what I have
which will never run out