wheel wieghts and problems / looking for feed back

[rusty marlin]

Hi, I'm new to this site, it was referenced by a shooter over on Accruateloading.com.
I posted this over there and thought I might get more feed back if I spread it around a little.
Thanks for taking the time to read this.
Rusty

Observations and musings about wheel weights.

First I’m new at using wheel weights for bullets. I have been using pure lead for round balls and Minies for 20 years. Started casting my own .58’s at something like 12. And then started using 20:1 lead: tin for .45-70 405HB’s. I always had known alloys to start with and my bullets almost always came out great.

I have always purchased my hard alloy bullets for my center fire pistols and rifles. The prices were reasonable and quality was great for run of the mill calibers.
Then I started to play with big slugs, 420-grain .45-70 and oddball dia. slugs like .382 for a .38-55 and either the prices were too high or the size unobtainable.
So I started to play with wheel weights and wouldn’t you know it I killed my first batch of alloy with a zinc weight (or two). I also have some other theories, as yet untested, about what went wrong with my first foray into using wheel weights for cast bullets. After fighting with poor mold fill and bullet weights that varied by as much as 10 grains, I figured out part of the problem, Zinc. But I think there are other metals too that are in wheel weights that doomed my first attempt. I took all my pre-cast ingots, about 100 pounds and tossed them in the bottom of the cabinet my bench grinder is on. At least they can do one thing right, deaden vibration in my grinding bench.

I’m getting ready to start casting again and have decided to sort my wheel weights by ductility and fracture characteristics. Maybe I’m wasting my time, but here’s what I’ve started doing. Any wheel weight that says MICRO or has a single M, P or T goes in the “good” bucket. Everything else goes in the “unknown” bucket; if it’s too small to have a code I toss them too. I have a very unscientific test that I use to determine this. I took longish (2 ½” to 3”) wheel weights of all the various letter codes I could find in my buckets, clamped one end in my bench vice and then tried to bend them 90 degrees. MICRO’s will bend 90 or beyond and might tear just a little across the outside of the bend. Good ductility, and fairly soft. The M’s act the same.
The P’s and T’s will bend 90, tear about 30% through the thickness with obvious tensile stretching and the grain structure inside is nice and tight with no voids or bubbles. Good toughness and good ductility.

The other letter codes like AL-MC, MC and others I can’t recall just now bend about 10-20 degrees and then they snap off like a piece of cast pot metal with no signs of tensile stretching. These have big voids with discolored (reddish brown) surfaces inside the bubbles and varying grain structure; small grains mixed with blobs and large grains. I have no idea how hard these are, perhaps if I cast samples from the “Good” types and heat-treat them they will act the same. But I doubt it. The clue is the voids. What is in the alloy that is out-gassing at pour? I have no idea; maybe they have high Zinc content, or Cadmium from recycled batteries, or some percentage of Aluminum. The Lyman book lists how these metals affect the bullet alloy and the descriptions pretty much match what I’m seeing.

The next step is to make a mold and cast some test samples of my sorted “Good” and “Unknown” and see if after melting and pouring the physical characteristics change.

Have any of the fellows with more experience with WW casting done anything like this?
Has this experiment been done and documented before?

Any and all constructive feedback is welcome. I just want to make the best bullets I can.

[Bucks Owin]

Hmmm...Good post!

I have never even thought about zinc. I've had some problems with getting bullets filled out properly too with straight WW metal. My "fix" was to just use it 50/50 with linotype which seems to work fairly well. Problem I have with WWs is getting all the dern dirt out of the mix! Any recommendations regarding flux? I've just been using a little Lee alox bullet lube and I'm sure there are better "recipes"...

Dennis

BTW, we have about the same background with casting. I too started out casting RBs and "Minie balls" for my front stuffers. This "scientific" casting for handguns is new and kinda experimental for me....

[Dye]

rusty marlin
I would like to buy some of that contaminated alloy to mess with. It will take about 15 lb..
If you will sell me some PM me a price and your shipping address and I will send you
the money. Also would appreciate a short narrative on how you processed them.

Be carefull Dye

[Dale53]

Many use straight wheel weights with success. I have better success if I add 2% tin. I bought my tin in extruded bars from a local refinery. I give a general "look see" when I add wheel weights to my "smelter" and remove valve cores, odd looking WW's, and other junk. That's all the sorting that I do. I put only clean metal in my casting pot. I use NEI flux, LETS flux, or LEADX flux. All of these commercial products seem to do a better job than beeswax, parafine, etc. YMMV After the metal is smelted, I only flux one time (each time I start up the pot). I get NO separation of metals.

When I want harder bullets, I add linotype (up to 5/1 WW/lino). I have a simple kitchen scale next to my bottom pour pot where I mix alloys just before casting. I also have a little postal scale there, to weigh tin (take a bar of tin and melt off the amount needed right in the molten metal - check weigh as I go with the greater accuracy of the postal scale).

Dale53

[w30wcf]

See http://www.perfectequipment.com/non_lead.php for info on zinc wheel weights.

w30wcf

[Bass Ackward]

Rusty,

There are many possibilities here. The easiest method is to sell some to Dye with the stipulation that he report back on it. I would do this before I added anything else to the mix that increases costs.

But if you get a wild hair, sometimes a batch can be .... saved by dillution with another batch that get's you where you want to be. But better safe than sorry. If you do decide to mix it, the best way I believe is to mix it with pure lead. That will raise the melting temperature where the zinc becomes more fluid and may work. If you go even down as far as 50/50, you can still water drop or HT for a hardness at least up to 16 BHN.

[KCSO]

I currently have about 400 pounds of wheel weights to melt down. I just do a quick visual check and then smelt them in a big pot outdoors. I save candel stubs and use the wax for flux, I melt about 200 lbs at a time and put in about a quart of wax and keep mixing until it is all burned off. I then skim with a scoop made from a big old ladle and then flux again. If I am needing hard bullets I add 1/2 lino or for w/w mix i just throw in 5 pounds of tin to 100 pounds of w/w to help with fill out. I then pour it all inot a commercial muffin tin for ingots and stamp the alloy on the side. I usually smelt once a year and I do 1 pot of ww1 of lino ww and one of pure lead. This does me for bullets, sinkers and trading stock. I have been lucky so far as I have yet to get a zinc w/w in the mix.

[454PB]

In the 36 years I've been melting wheelweights, I've never come across one made of Zinc. Maybe it's because they were all OLD wheelweights. I have two 5 gallon buckets that need smelting, but I'm still working on 300 lbs. of wheelweight ingots I made several years ago. Those two buckets are about 15 years old. I'm not to hot about sorting and testing them, the last time I smelted I bet it was 5 or 6 thousand individual wheelweights.

It seems to me that if a Zinc wheelweight made itself to the melting pot, it would float. Zinc is less dense and has a higher melting temperature than lead (787 degrees F)

I flux with parafin, bullet lube, crayons, motor oil, and other things unmentionable when smelting. I do this outdoors, and do the "potty dance" trying to avoid inhaling the smoke. For casting, I use Marvelux, because I cast in a shop with poor ventilation. I've used the NEI flux and a flux from a commercial lead smelter, but I can't see any difference in how well they work, only how noxious the fumes are.

The addition of 2% tin certainly makes wheelweights cast better, but I've made some fine looking boolits from straight wheelweights. Since I have a lot of linotype, that's what I use for hardness and castability. Depending on the application, I've used from 25% to 75% linotype to wheelweights. A mixture of 50% linotype and 50% pure lead is an excellent alloy, about like wheelweights with 2% tin added.

[rusty marlin]

Last night I picked out 6 known zinc wieghts out of about 60 pounds.

Bass Ackward, I'm not going to melt those down again unless its for balast. I've wasted too much time with that batch of alloy already and I've decided its time for a "Do Over".

w30wcf: many of the weights pictured in that link look like what I was tossing out. But the letter designations didn't match. Its "nice" of them to put a Z in the type designation so they can be easily sorted.

[rbstern]

I've gone through a couple hundred pounds of recent wheel weights. The only sorting I do is to take the soft stick on weights out and ingot them separately. I've never experienced zinc contamination, or if I have, it hasn't shown up in the bullets. Bottom pour pot results, perhaps? I never fully empty my bottom pour, so it's entirely possible there is a layer of zinc on top, or that it gets skimmed off with the flux.

[Calamity Jake]

You can save that zink contaminated mix by remelting at as low a temp as possible, the zink will float to the top and can be skimmed off.
After the questionable mix is just liquid turn down the heat a little then stur and let it set 10-15 minutes then skim the top, repeat these steps 5-10 times depending on amount of contamination, then flux again an cast some boolets to check fillout, if still bad then skim somemore.

[mooman76]

I'm not sure if it correct or not but I've been told the zink WW will stay shiney when the lead gets that dull finish after awhile!

[rusty marlin]

many o fthe new ww have a poly coating to keep them from staining alloy wheels, so shiney or not is not a good indicator. Infact all the Zinc ones I pulled last night were painted black. They are flat and screw holes in them.

[Duckiller]

I have found zinc in wheel weights from various shops. I sort to get rid of trash and zinc. Inaddition to being riveted to clips zinc is lighter than lead and harder. Anything that is suspious is set aside and checked with a knife point. If hard to scratch out it goes. I smelt with a turkey cooker and cast iron pot. Watch the temperature, Zinc melts at a high temp and floats. Once the lead starts to melt I reduce the gas and take a little longer to get lead melted. Even with hand sorting a few wheel weights float to the surface. These are scooped off and thrown away. Slotted spoon from the local Thrift store works real good to remove anything I don't want in the melt. Need to flux often and stir deep. Somehow some weights stick/stay at the bottom of the pot without deep stirring. Calamity Jake's method may salvage the contaminated mix. May loose a little tin/antimony but you would save the lead. I also sort out stick on weights and make seperate ingots. Zinc also appears in stick on weights. With low melting temp the Zinc was easy to scoop out. Best method I have foundto avoid zinc is to sort carefully and melt at low temp. Duckiller

[Springfield]

I do like Duckkiller, melt at the lowest temp possible and scoop out the silver lump that floats to the top. Might be lead, might be zinc, but if it don't melt with everything else, out it goes. I can afford to lose a couple of pounds of lead in a 600 pound batch. My bullets always come out great so I must be doing something right. When I sort the wheelweights I also take out the stick ons, and any that look different than traditional weights, especially flat ones with holes in them.

[Greg5278]

I had never had a zinc problem until a few weeks ago., I clean my weights in 100-150# batches in a large dutch oven on a turkey burner. I usually keep the temp below 600-650F to keep Zinc weights from melting. I left the burner on 3/4 heat for a while when doing yard work, and came back to a pot that was over 800F. I fluxed and skimmed the mix. It would not fill the mold very well. The surface of the melt would look like silver oatmeal flakes when stirred. I can only assume that zinc is the culprit. I get all of my WW for free, so I will discard the alloy for scrap or fishing sinkers. I am fortunate, the tire shop calls me when they get 300-1500#, and gives me an additional discount on my tires. Greg

[NVcurmudgeon]

Duckiller, I sort weights much as you do, with two exceptions. After sorting out trash and saving tape-on weights for bore slugs or giving/trading to muzzle loader shooters, I set aside any that look suspicious. The few JDLR (just don't look right, a phrase I learned from friends in law enforcement,) are first magnet tested. Most of the riveted weights I have seen proved to be iron or steel. The remainder are melted separately and most prove to be lead alloy, which join the "normal" weights in being made into ingots. Over the last ten years and 1000+ lbs. of WW, I have found two weights that did not fit into the above categories. One was a flat weight with holes that appeared to be plastic, as it stayed on the surface, assumed a spherical shape, and melted away. The other was riveted, non magnetic, and hard. This may have been zinc. I don't worry much about zinc because it has a much higher melting point than anybody needs to use for smelting. YMMV!

[6pt-sika]

Rusty marlin , I live in Orange County VA , where you at in the northern neck ? Reedville by chance ?

[6pt-sika]

Rusty marlin , I live in Orange County VA , where you at in the northern neck ? Reedville by chance ?

[6pt-sika]

Rusty Marlin , I'm in Orange VA , where are you in the northern neck ? Reedville perhaps ?