Wheel Weights

[trapper44shooter]

I have a tire store that is saving their used wheel weights for me would I have to add anything to make them a little harder for shooting round balls in my 44 caliber cap & ball revolver I do see a lot of ones that have "Fe" stamped & these will not work for the yare steel or iron & some of the others have "Zn" marked on them & I know they can't be used I will be getting a little every couple of weeks to a month

[Bazoo]

You cannot use them for a cap and ball. You need soft lead. Some of the stick on weights are soft. Some are not. It's easy to tell though. There is a sticky, I think in the lead sub category about sorting wheel weights and gives good information on which ones are soft and which are harder.

[Silvercreek Farmer]

Call around to local scrapyards and see if any have soft lead for sale. Some don't sell to the public, but if you find a good one that does, it might be the only place you ever need to go.

[Silvercreek Farmer]

Or check swapping and selling for soft lead.

[rancher1913]

coww can be used in a pinch for round balls, but they are harder to load, best thing is to save them and trade for soft lead, everybody wins that way. I have a bunch of soft if you ever want to trade.

[dg31872]

For soft lead, I befriend roofers. Sometimes roof jacks are made of dead soft lead, and they get changed when they re-roof a house. I get my roof jacks for scrap price and an occasional case of "adult beverage".

[Green Frog]

I have a tire store that is saving their used wheel weights for me would I have to add anything to make them a little harder for shooting round balls in my 44 caliber cap & ball revolver I do see a lot of ones that have "Fe" stamped & these will not work for the yare steel or iron & some of the others have "Zn" marked on them & I know they can't be used I will be getting a little every couple of weeks to a month

What part of VA are you in? (I’m in Lynchburg.) If you read through the archives about wheel weight composition, you will see that there is a ton of discussion about the changing %-ages of lead and other metals in the current crop... with more and more zinc and iron specimens and fewer lead ones. the upshot of it is, sorting out the lead based COWWs may still be worthwhile, but they are still too hard for best application in your C&B revolver (or just about any other BP shooting.) If you’re willing to take the time to get good lead alloy wheel weights sorted out of the mix, they have value to them reloaded, so trading them for pure lead from roofing, sheathing, etc, is a possibility.

Are you close enough to drop by the Lynchburg Gun Show this weekend? If so, drop me a PM and we’ll discuss this all at length.

Froggie

[lightman]

Congratulations on finding a steady source of lead!

To make a brief summary about wheel weights. There are basically 2 general types of wheel weights. Stick on and clip on. Both types are made from several different materials. Steel (FE), Zinc (ZN), Lead and a composite material. You will have to learn to sort them. For our purposes the lead is the only one thats useful to us, as casters. There are some that cast Zinc but that another topic.

You will want to use stick on weights for your new revolver. Lead stick on weights are soft lead and nearly pure, except for one type that is consistent with clip on weights. This type is painted, has raised letters vs stamped letters and has a little lip around the weight.

The merits of using wheel weights and the effort of scrounging for them and sorting them have been argued about a lot. Personally, they are my preferred source of lead but my lead vs non lead ratio is holding up well around here. This is not so in many parts of the country.

Having said all of this, the stickies have a lot of valuable info and are well worth reading.

You didn't say if you are getting these for free or having to buy them. Either way, you should consider doing something nice for those guys. Maybe a box of donuts early of a morning or something like that.

[fredj338]

The sticky weights are generally soft lead & would work fine for round balls. I have maybe 150# of stickies if you want to trade some. Cost you $16 in USPS flat rate shipping for 60#.

[Tazlaw]

Congratulations on finding a steady source of lead!

To make a brief summary about wheel weights. There are basically 2 general types of wheel weights. Stick on and clip on. Both types are made from several different materials. Steel (FE), Zinc (ZN), Lead and a composite material. You will have to learn to sort them. For our purposes the lead is the only one thats useful to us, as casters. There are some that cast Zinc but that another topic.

You will want to use stick on weights for your new revolver. Lead stick on weights are soft lead and nearly pure, except for one type that is consistent with clip on weights. This type is painted, has raised letters vs stamped letters and has a little lip around the weight.

The merits of using wheel weights and the effort of scrounging for them and sorting them have been argued about a lot. Personally, they are my preferred source of lead but my lead vs non lead ratio is holding up well around here. This is not so in many parts of the country.

Having said all of this, the stickies have a lot of valuable info and are well worth reading.

You didn't say if you are getting these for free or having to buy them. Either way, you should consider doing something nice for those guys. Maybe a box of donuts early of a morning or something like that.

Thanks Lightman, very informative.

[lightman]

Tazlaw, I got the test results back from those pole top pins that you and your dad watched us melt. They were about like clip on weights only they had a few 10ths more tin. They were sure labor intensive to melt though!

[Bantou]

Tazlaw, I got the test results back from those pole top pins that you and your dad watched us melt. They were about like clip on weights only they had a few 10ths more tin. They were sure labor intensive to melt though!

I’ve wondered about using those several times. How much lead to you pull from them? Do you get better results out of lead heads?


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[lightman]

I’ve wondered about using those several times. How much lead to you pull from them? Do you get better results out of lead heads?


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The best that I could estimate there were about 4 oz per pin. The older ones were a little larger, and would have had a little more lead. I was surprised that they were not soft lead.

XFR analysis showed them to be;

PB=97.1%
SB=2.3%
SN=.06%

They were slow to melt due to having minimum contact with the melting pot. We could have cut the threaded part off and speeded things up but we elected to let the propane do the work. Biggin saved these up all year and we ended up with about 280# of lead. If they are readily available and you get paid for getting them, or if you need lead I would say that it was worth it. I think he is going to collect them this year too.

[Bantou]

I’m a lineman so I have pretty ready access to them for free. For that yield I’ll probably just stick with wheel weights for $20 a bucket for now. That’s good info to have though. If I get in a bind I can always go dumpster diving at work to harvest some.


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[44magLeo]

You can always harvest them. Bring them home and store them somewhere just in case. Better to have and not need than need and not have.
Leo

[Bantou]

You can always harvest them. Bring them home and store them somewhere just in case. Better to have and not need than need and not have.
Leo

I could but the take up a significant amount of space unless you have a torch handy to cut the heads off which is a lot of work in its own right.


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[kevin c]

...They were slow to melt due to having minimum contact with the melting pot. We could have cut the threaded part off and speeded things up but we elected to let the propane do the work. Biggin saved these up all year and we ended up with about 280# of lead. If they are readily available and you get paid for getting them, or if you need lead I would say that it was worth it. I think he is going to collect them this year too.

Would it be possible to start with molten lead already in the pot and just put the pins lead covered end first to melt the lead off?

[lightman]

Its not good practice to add lead to already molten lead but thats what Biggin did. He wore a leather Blacksmiths apron, a face shield, a heavy long sleeve FR shirt and welding gloves. And he fed them in pretty slow, 3 or 4 in each hand. A few hissed a little but it was pretty uneventful, all told.

We discussed ways to make this go faster if he choses to save them again this year. I think he is going to cut the threads off as he gets them, usually a few at a time. We had enough to squat a 3/4 ton truck this time. We weighed the cost comparison between propane and saw blades for a chop saw and the propane won this time.

Trapper44, I apologize. We kind of walked all over your thread. I should have started a separate one.

[RydForLyf]

So, I was totally confused what you were talking about and went to Google. Are these the threaded insulator mounts I found with the threaded portion made of lead? If so, yeah, that does look like a lot of work, and left over scrap, for a little bit of lead. Y’all are serious.

[lightman]

So, I was totally confused what you were talking about and went to Google. Are these the threaded insulator mounts I found with the threaded portion made of lead? If so, yeah, that does look like a lot of work, and left over scrap, for a little bit of lead. Y’all are serious.

Yes, that is them. If I was better with pictures I would post up a few. Its not a common source unless you are in the electric business. You might occasionally run across them at a scrap yard.

The ones in the Google pictures have polymer threads. The older ones were lead. There are also pole top pins and crossarm pins.