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Thread: How much in a 5 gallon bucket?

  1. #41
    Boolit Master snaggdit's Avatar
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    If you can move a FULL 5 gallon pail around without grunting, you are in the running for superman. They tend to weigh 140-180lbs. I'm pretty healthy and I tend to prefer separating down to 3 gallon pails for easy moving. Sorry you live in that liberal state... We don't mind the conspiracy stuff. Most of us subscribe.
    "To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical. " - Thomas Jefferson

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  2. #42
    Boolit Master evan price's Avatar
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    OK, been scrounging lately. This week I've been to a dozen tire & repair shops that are on the drive home. Out of those, 4 were willing to part with weights. I got two full to the brim 5-gallon buckets full now for the grand total of $20 invested. Plus I have a couple lines on more free lead, one shop I saw three dusty full 5-gal buckets in the corner and the owner wasn't there- the employee said he was wanting to find something to do with it because they can't throw it out anymore!!! Going back there ASAP.

    Dumped them out on the bed of my flatbed trailer and started picking out the garbage. Had a 10-qt trash bucket full of valves & stems, tire stickers, cig butts, misc. metal junk/nuts & washers & broken lug studs, and non-lead weights. Plus a very nice ARO air-blow gun that was in the bottom of one bucket and a handful of brand new valve stems.

    There were quite a few iron and zinc stick-on weights. Plus I found some of those plastic BMW weights. A bunch more clip-on iron and zinc weights. All in all for $20 I think I did OK.

    There is one spot where there are 4 mechanic shops all on different corners of the same intersection. Went to all four. The first two were under contract. The third one the guy sells them to someone already. The fourth one was SCORE! Funny how that works.

    What I found out:

    Goodyear (company stores): Under contract nationwide for all lead. Get put into little flip-lid Nestor type plastic bins and sent out monthly to the central warehouse.

    Wal*Mart & Sam's Club: Under national contract to Exide Battery for all lead; Exide truck picks up at the store with core batteries.

    Tire Discounters: Under national contract to Exide Battery; all lead and scrap gets sent back to home warehouse on supply trucks weekly.

    Sears: Under national contract to send all lead back to their central warehouse for Johnson Controls.

    Firestone (Company owned stores): Under national contract to Interstate battery for all lead. Gets sent back to central warehouse. Recently stopped (in some stores) sending lead weight in because they switched to iron weights and they are unpopular. Some stores saving used lead weights for use with rebalances and only using new weights on new tire installs.

    Pep Boys: Under national contract to send all lead back to central warehouse for their battery vendor.

    National Tire & Battery/Tire Kingdom: See Sears

    Costco: Sends all lead out with core batteries. Didn't say who.

    Bear in mind that this is the "official" company line for lead disposition. I find that if I go to the lead mechanic in the tire bay they often are willing to sell lead for cash money. One Pep Boys employee very deliberately told me that they don't sell lead, then pointedly turned his back on me after showing me how much lead was in their bucket and mumbled something about what he didn't see he can't get in trouble for. He also offered me a Pep Boys shopping bag to put the lead in.

    One other large chain (I'm not naming who)their mechanic and shift manager took my money and dumped all the "EXIDE LEAD RECYCLING!" buckets into my bucket.

    One heavy-truck repair shop offered to give me all their weights in exchange for dropping off some .357 slugs for them. Deal!

    I was also surprised how many other people are looking. Some places said there were other folks already been there. A couple really good places turned out to already have an employee who casts.


    The secret to this is:

    1. Show up in the early morning when they are cleaning up to open, or at the end of the day when they are cleaning up to leave, or sometime when they are not really busy. Don't bother them.

    2. Dress like a hardworking guy. Be polite and look decent. Jeans, work shirt, boots. Introduce yourself and shake hands.

    3. Have cash and bring your own buckets.

    4. Ask nicely, and ask the mechanics first before the owner. Phrase it as- can you help me out with some lead? I'm willing to pay $X per bucket.

    5. If they say yes, make sure you pick up all the loose weights laying around on the floor by their buckets.

    6. Some people ask what they are for. My standard answer is that they can be melted down for fishing weights. I don't say bullets. One of the places I got a lot of free lead, the guy said a previous job he had somebody coming in to get lead for bullets, and he thought that guy was a little crazy and wouldnt sell him lead. Nobody is worried about fishing weights.
    Due to market fluctuations I am no longer buying range scrap jackets.

    Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc

  3. #43
    Boolit Bub oleycow's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by evan price View Post
    Wal*Mart & Sam's Club: Under national contract to Exide Battery for all lead; Exide truck picks up at the store with core batteries.
    Even though they may be under national contract does not mean that they won't give me my old weights back when I have my tires changed or balanced. Got four new ones put on at walmart two days ago and asked for my old ones back, THEY ARE MINE got them back. Paid for the lifetime balance and I will be going in for balancing as much as I can. I have begun asking friends to do the same. Things are looking up.

  4. #44
    Boolit Mold
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    You might try scuba weights, since half or more of the tire weights now are steel and zinc.

  5. #45
    Boolit Buddy
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    Thats why living in california sucks, ive hardly got any around here.

  6. #46
    Boolit Buddy desteve811's Avatar
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    Just smelting down a 5 gallon bucket full of WW tonight. The bucket weight about 120lbs. Once they were smelted down and clean up, i ended up with 85lbs of clean lead ignots.

  7. #47
    Boolit Buddy
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    Huh????

  8. #48
    Boolit Buddy
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    Too bad they dont teach common sense to engineers in school.

  9. #49
    Boolit Bub
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    I just picked up my first 5 gallon bucket of weights today. I paid $25.00 at the local tire shop. It's full to the top and according to my bathroom scale, it is 145 LBS on the nose.

  10. #50
    Boolit Buddy
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    Paid $60.00 for a 5 Gal. bucket and got 182# lead after smelting and removing iron and zinc WW

    Dan

  11. #51
    Boolit Mold
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    Got two prices here locally: One fellow quoted me $60 and one much more friendly fellow $40. The $40 place is out, but I'm going back in a week. Good to know what the approximate weight is because I feel pretty good about those prices. Thanks, everyone who posted the weights they got out of 5 gallons!!!

  12. #52
    Boolit Master sheepdog's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by oleycow View Post
    Even though they may be under national contract does not mean that they won't give me my old weights back when I have my tires changed or balanced. Got four new ones put on at walmart two days ago and asked for my old ones back, THEY ARE MINE got them back. Paid for the lifetime balance and I will be going in for balancing as much as I can. I have begun asking friends to do the same. Things are looking up.
    Yeah I get some from Walmarts at times but got to get in and out quick, not seen by a manager. Even then high percentage of a zinc and WW. Low shops that tend to favor non-import cars (mom and pops, non-chains) tend to have a higher % of lead than zinc to steel. One shop right by my house about almost zero, as they specialize in domestics.

  13. #53
    Boolit Buddy johnlaw484's Avatar
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    I never thought about the scrap yard. I'll try that.
    There are two theories to arguing with a woman .. . Neither works.

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  14. #54
    Boolit Mold
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    wheel weights

    After working at a tire dealer I can tell you what you probably allready know.
    Lead wheel weights are slowly dissapearing. If I fill up a 5 gallon bucket and
    slowly go thru them I will find that 50% of them are not lead, they are some
    other kind of alloy and they just go into the junk pile. Every year that goes by another percent gets added to the junk pile. Do the math.


    farky

  15. #55
    Boolit Grand Master fredj338's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Bob. View Post
    badgeredd
    Your right I just got lucky on my first bucket @ $20, it was heaping and running over and it made 162 LB's of WW muffins
    The two not so full buckets at $55 only made 189 lb's of muffins, So I guess I should look at the average.
    But i'm still looking forward to going back to the first store just dont want to go back too soon?

    Bob
    Pretty soon I am gonna have to have you start mailing me lead ingots here in Kommifronia.

  16. #56
    Boolit Master

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    I picked up a full 5 gallon bucket of wheel weights this pm for $25 dollars. They were clean and a few stick-on weights were present. Weight? pretty darn heavy. One or two more of these will get me through my fishing and shooting career.

  17. #57
    Boolit Buddy Mattog22's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by sheepdog View Post
    Yeah I get some from Walmarts at times but got to get in and out quick, not seen by a manager. Even then high percentage of a zinc and WW. Low shops that tend to favor non-import cars (mom and pops, non-chains) tend to have a higher % of lead than zinc to steel. One shop right by my house about almost zero, as they specialize in domestics.
    I managed to get a few of those smaller black exide buckets (2 or 3 gal?) from walmart. There were a lot of steel and zinc weights. It was my first time smelting ingots but I was surprised that after going through 2 of those buckets I had a 5 gal bucket about 3/5 full of clips, zinc, and steel WW. I have about 105 mini muffin ingots and about 2-3 inches of clean lead still in the cast iron pot. I don't know if this is good recovery or not but it doesn't seem like much for what I think is about 6 gallons of WW. I did notice that the bucket I got from a local shop didn't seem to have hardly any zinc or steel WW.
    Last edited by Mattog22; 07-13-2010 at 10:03 AM. Reason: clarity

  18. #58
    Boolit Buddy awaveritt's Avatar
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    So far I've been pretty lucky here in central Texas. Since October 2009, I've collected enough wheel weights to yield about 180 lbs of ingots, clip-on (70%) and stick-on (30%), all just for the asking. However, my last two scores have been paying gigs, arranged by a buddy in a nearby town - 82lbs (after sorting/culling) for $30 and then he scored about 95 lbs. for TEN DOLLARS. So, for a grand total of 40 bucks, I've managed to scrounge just over 350 lbs of lead, since I started. Guess that's about 11 cents per pound.

    That's over 15,000 boolits of the average weights I shoot.
    Ain't that Hatchet Jack's rifle?
    Yep. Found him froze to a tree.
    Damn! He was a wild one, old Hatchet Jack. He was livin' two year in a cave up on the Musselshell with a female panther. She never did get used to him.

  19. #59
    Boolit Buddy
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    Last bucket I had, some nitwit dumped a razor blade in it. I just missed cutting my hand wide open.
    When you start rummaging through those buckets, make sure of what you are reaching for.

  20. #60
    Boolit Buddy Mattog22's Avatar
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    I got some nasty ones, bucket smelled like it had a dead rat in it. There was other trash and about an inch of nasty smelly green liquid in the bottom. Washed it out with the WW in it, set it in the sun for a few days and they still smell horrid! Can't wait to get them melted and be done with the mess. All that for about 3 or 4 inches of WW in the bottom of the bucket, but I can't bring myself not to use them. It's amazing since I started collecting WW it's like I have Tire Shop radar everywhere I drive.

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Abbreviations used in Reloading

BP Bronze Point IMR Improved Military Rifle PTD Pointed
BR Bench Rest M Magnum RN Round Nose
BT Boat Tail PL Power-Lokt SP Soft Point
C Compressed Charge PR Primer SPCL Soft Point "Core-Lokt"
HP Hollow Point PSPCL Pointed Soft Point "Core Lokt" C.O.L. Cartridge Overall Length
PSP Pointed Soft Point Spz Spitzer Point SBT Spitzer Boat Tail
LRN Lead Round Nose LWC Lead Wad Cutter LSWC Lead Semi Wad Cutter
GC Gas Check