I was fairly new to reloading and to boolit casting when I bought the Lyman "Reloading Handbook" 44th edition -- dated 1967. I've acquired a few more handbooks since then but I've never thrown one away. Thanks to fellow boolit caster HARRYMPOPE I now have a 38-55 to load for so there I was looking through the old 44th edition. Then proceeded to read some of their stuff on alloys (they used nothing but Lyman #2 for everything, including pistol target loads!)
They gave a couple different ways to mix up Lyman #2, one of which used wheelweight metal. But their formula for making the Lyman #2 with wheelweight metal depends on wheelweights having 9% Antimony.
I was doing a little bit of boolit casting back in the early 60's and would have used wheelweight metal. And I was casting for several different rifles plus 357 revolver by the early 70's, using straight wheelweight metal. Biggest part of my boolits over the past 50+ years have been made of straight wheelweight metal and a few days ago I would have said there has been no difference in casting properties and boolit weights from COWW over that span of time. And when I do mix up an alloy based on COWW I figure on it being about 3% antimony and half a percent tin.
So -- question for you "mature gentlemen" -- did wheelweights ever consist of 9% antimony?