Pure lead... nearly pure lead?

[Finn45]

Oh yeah, been reading from many sources that stick on weights are pure lead or near to it. I've seen also mentioned that it's same alloy as clip-on weights and it just feels softer because stickers are so thin etc. Last spring I saved all stick-on weights separately, still have them marked in separate pile.

Today I was finishing my spring melt, started it couple of days ago. Visited local recycling center (junk yard) before it and found big lot of very very old lead that was used to seal some containers built of bricks or something in the old days. I bought few pounds just to see what it is besides ugly and dirty. There's maybe more than a ton of it.

Melted first the remaining clip-on weights and poured few samples just to see what hardness this batch might have.

After that I melted those few pound of scrap lead and poured few samples as well.

Last was going to be the stick-on weights. I started but stopped after few pounds; weather was just too calm and fine to spoil it with that kinky smell of burning dirty rubber. Will melt them later, probably when visiting my in-laws... But, I poured few samples from these as well.

I already noticed when pouring stick-on samples, that it has very similar looking alloy as clip-on weights; lumpy when still cold, similar coloring and similar behavior (frozen and leaking) during cooling in the ingot mold. I measured these with Saeco tester; clip-on weights resulted exactly Saeco5-BHN8 as they have been doing before. Quite soft alloy almost right after pouring and air cooled. And the damn stick-on weights resulted exactly perfectly the same Saeco5-BHN8 reading. Very clever to separate them and store them almost behind locked doors ... How about the scrap lead then; it resulted as perfectly as possible Saeco0-BHN4 and when melted it was very fine looking, no odd colorings and cast very wet looking samples. No lumpy texture, no frozen and leaking behavior during cooling in the ingot mold... Pure old lead. Unfortunately $0.40 per pound, so no big reason to collect it all right away.

Stick-on weights are softer when handled, why? My theory is that because they are extruded, or swaged in the manufacturing process, they remain as soft as the alloy is. But clip-on weights are cast in machines and because of the production capacity they are most likely cooled very fast and therefore they get harder, just like water quenched boolits.

No way more separating them for me. This might be different in the US, but don't bet too much on it before you check the facts.

[Pepe Ray]

That was a good post Finn.
Thanks for the info. Pepe Ray

[drinks]

Finn;
On another forum, several of us did a bunch of melting and checking BHN of wws and stickons.
In the south, wws were from BHN 11 to BHN 14 before melting, the melted batches were from BHN 12 to BHN 14 after 24 hours.
The stickons were from BHN 6 to BHN 8, with most samples of scrap lead, such as flashing and roof jacks being BHN 5 to BHN 6..
At least 3 of us were using both the Lee optical tester and the Cabine Tree dial gage tester, all calibrated with a common sample of new linotype from MidwayUSA.
The people in the north central part of the country had mostly BHN 9- BHN 10 wws and BHN 5 stickons, seems to be regional differences in foundrys and limited dispersal due to the high shipping cost of moving lead around.
Don

[mooman76]

I think they make the stick ons softer because they have to take on the form of the wheel to aid in sticking and staying stuck to the wheel better!

[Dale53]

I would be more interested in the BHN after two weeks.

Dale53

[drinks]

Actually, we had runon testing up to 2 weeks.
Also had test series of ww + chilled shot, both air cooled and water dropped over at least 1 week, very interesting.
How would you like cast bullets with BHN of 28-32?
We got them.

[John Boy]

FYI ... The stick on WW's are Tape-A-Weight brand. Their composition is:
Pb - 98.144
Sb - 00.377
Sn - 01.450
As - 00.029

Garden variety WW's are in the 96.5% Pb range - so cull them stick on's out

[NVcurmudgeon]

Reijo, is it possible that Finnish stick-on WW are hard as common clip-on weights, while American stick-ons are pure, or nearly pure lead. My most unscientific "collision test" indicates that ingots of stick-on weights are softer than ingots of normal WW. (I bang ingots of WW and stick-on together, sharp edge to sharp edge and eyeball the relative dent sizes.) I like to keep a few boolits cast of stick-on WW metal around to use as bore measuring slugs, they seem to slide down the bore easier than commmon clip-on weights.

[NVcurmudgeon]

Reijo, is it possible that Finnish stick-on WW are hard as common clip-on weights, while American stick-ons are pure, or nearly pure lead. My most unscientific "collision test" indicates that ingots of stick-on weights are softer than ingots of normal WW. (I bang ingots of WW and stick-on together, sharp edge to sharp edge and eyeball the relative dent sizes.) I like to keep a few boolits cast of stick-on WW metal around to use as bore measuring slugs, they seem to slide down the bore easier than boolits cast of commmon clip-on weights.

[Finn45]

Bill and others,
Thanks for the comments. It seems to be obvious that clip-ons are harder there. Much harder, and I had that impression also before. Btw have someone checked latest brand new weights? Well, they could be similar, it's not so easy to switch things if it's not necessary. Our weights are coming from several other European countries and there're many brands and forms, but the alloy might be pretty much standardized here around. Probably some cost accountant wanted makers to find alloy which allows both swaging and casting. Sheesh and now we have zinc and iron also... Must collect healthy dose of that old lead... at least it seems to be real stuff... I'll save the samples to check them again later. I know that my clip-on boolits are getting harder during few days-weeks.