How much is lost when melting clip on wheel weights?

[bluesman423]

I have searched but cannot find the answer and I feel it is likely here somewhere.

Can you tell me or point me to the answer please?

How much weight is lost when melting clip on wheel weights into ingots?

Thank you if you can help me.

[405grain]

It depends. The steel clips and any dirt are waste. Modern wheel weights are either zinc or steel. Don't melt any zinc wheel weights into your mix or it will ruin your alloy. Once you sort out all the useless zinc and steel weights you'll obviously have less. If you have a bucket of wheel weights and half of them are zinc, there goes half of that weight. You should only be melting lead alloy wheel weights, and the finished amount that you get will be whatever it is after all the crud and dross gets skimmed off.

[super6]

My experience With wheel weights is once the steel and the zink floaters and the dross... about 80 % Wish I could direct you to a proven post! just my stuff.

[Winger Ed.]

It'll vary depending on how many long & short ones you start with.

[poppy42]

Don’t know if this is what you’re looking for but this is kind of what I go by. A 5 gallon bucket full of wheel weights straight from the tire store weighs roughly 120 pounds. After sorting and melting down into ingots, if I get a quarter to a third of the total weight of wheel weights as usable lead ingots I consider it a good batch. Now some might not consider that a good yield but that percentage doesn’t bother me in the least. I get the bucket of wheel weights for nothing or maybe a six pack here and there. I want up with 30 to 40 pounds of lead ingots. Which leaves me roughly 80 pounds of scrap junk wheel weights. And then Kaarto scrap junk wheel weights off to a recycler that graciously gives me $.15 a pound for them. So for every bucket of wheel weights I get I get 30 pounds a usable lead and once you factor in the cost of my gas to go pick up the wheel weights, and the propane to melt the wheel weights into ingots, I break even! Unfortunately it doesn’t always work out that way. It’s not bad when you get a full bucket every month. But when you go collect your wheel weights and you only wind up with a half of a bucket or less of wheel weights you’re a percentage of usable lead ingots drops considerably. When that happens I just wait till I have enough to melt it into ingots. I do realize that sooner the later the well will run dry.

[Rickf1985]

This is from one of my super lucky hauls a couple years ago. But it will give you an idea of loss on batches without junk in them.

Finshed up the 1,000 lb. lot that I got the first run with the exception of some monster truck weights that I tossed aside and they didn't make it in the pot. There are 18 lbs. of them. All of the stick-ons I pulled out but I have a sneaky suspicion that this guy had already gone through and checked whether they were soft or hard because all of the ones I tossed in a box are hard to bend. Not zinc hard but not soft lead by a long shot. I am going to test some to see what the hardness is on them before I melt them down 35lbs of them. So 53 lbs. of weights that did not get melted but I am just going to add that to the total at the end since the stickons will have next to no loss and the huge truck weights will only have about ten clips, so again, loss is negligible. All the rest of the weights are now cast boolits ingots and I ended up with 895lbs. of ingots, 105lbs. of clips and about 11lbs. of dross. Total of everything comes out to 1,064 lbs.
I know the seller was giving me the benefit of the doubt on the weight, but I didn't think it was that much of a benefit! When you figure the other 53 lbs. left to melt that will give me 948 lbs. of clean lead. 52lbs. short of the total purchased.
Total amount of trash mixed in with the weights amounted to two valve stems, one shock bushing, and a couple valve stem cores. Period!! No zincs at all. In the very first pot I got two small plastic composite weights and I have to wonder if they were not tossed in somewhere else along the line.

[jsizemore]

If it's just lead COWWs then it's 90% alloy and 10% clips and dross.

[farmbif]

it also depends on the size of the wheel weights if they are 1 inch long or 5 inches long. somewhere on here I did an estimation of ingot production from a 55 gallon drum of wheel weights. I think I figured like 60 to 80 percent finished ingot weight no knowing what might be in the drum straight from the scrap yard. the scrap yard I found will sell me anything they have at a fair price. if I ever get caught up with the projects I've taken on I may go for the hour drive to this wonderful scrap yard and buy all the lead stuff they have give it a go just to find out. I found another small scrap yard that is quite unique. it's in a big city and the inside of the building looks like a hoarders paradise. I saw a container with pewter items and asked how much for the pewter, he said $4lb. I pulled out my wallet and said I'll take all he's got. the man balked and said he's really not sure and I would have to come back next week. he had large bins full of sheet lead. I asked how much. $2lb, no thank you but on a large old American made arbor press, probably a 3 ton, $100.

[gwpercle]

The steel clips don't make up that much ... and usually the dirt isn't that much either .
You will flux and get some trash out but if you start with nothing but clip on wheel weights in your pot ... and my supply in the past was only COWW and from mostly Truck Tires ... I would say 85 percent is lead and 15 percent is clips and dirt ... also figuring that most are large size weights not the little "peanut" sized weights that are mostly clip and little lead .
But I never weighed them , just melted , fluxed and skimmed the pot ...
I also have no idea how many Steel and Zinc weights show up in a bucket nowdays , my free unlimited supply retired from the Tire Business and I'm working on the supply I've hoarded away from the good old days ...clip-on and stick-on ... and that was all there was!
Gary

[hermans]

From my records, the last time I did a big batch of sorted COWW, so no zinc or steel in the batch, I was left with 83% of the mass I started with.

[gwpercle]

From my records, the last time I did a big batch of sorted COWW, so no zinc or steel in the batch, I was left with 83% of the mass I started with.

That's just about exactly what I guess-timated ...85% lead and 15% cips ,dirt and dross !
Gary

[JonB_in_Glencoe]

I have searched but cannot find the answer and I feel it is likely here somewhere.

Can you tell me or point me to the answer please?

How much weight is lost when melting clip on wheel weights into ingots?

Thank you if you can help me.

What is important is, if you are doing things correctly, you will lose no lead alloy.

As to a bucket of COWW in the raw, looking for a reasonable answer to what amount isn't lead alloy is a continually changing variable that cannot be known.

[lightman]

I figure 12 to 15% loss due to clips. Like the others have said, it can vary.

[35 Rem]

15% for clip weight is about what I've experienced. Of course this assumes all lead weights, i.e. no steel or zinc. That is an unlikely assumption nowadays.

[GlocksareGood]

Modern buckets coming from Ohio I am seeing about 50% loss from the steel. Lots of steel weights now and the plastic coated steel ones. Figuring in trash, steel and zinc out of the 900lbs I picked up I hope to get 450lbs of ingots.

[Woodtroll]

On the batches I've measured out of my own curiosity, the yield was 82-85% lead, the same ballpark others have indicated. This was years ago, though, before steel and zinc weights became so common, so I would expect a lower yield from modern scrap buckets from tire shops, unless you pre-sort them.

[fredj338]

15% for clip weight is about what I've experienced. Of course this assumes all lead weights, i.e. no steel or zinc. That is an unlikely assumption nowadays.

^^THIS%% Yes size matters. You get a lot more waste if the ww are small.

[fredj338]

Modern buckets coming from Ohio I am seeing about 50% loss from the steel. Lots of steel weights now and the plastic coated steel ones. Figuring in trash, steel and zinc out of the 900lbs I picked up I hope to get 450lbs of ingots.

Even higher in states like Kalif when they were banned. Tires are good for about 5y max, so the older lead weights are getting less & less.

[bluesman423]

Wow guys ...... thank you all for the help. I appreciate it.

[William Yanda]

Obviously you are a half empty glass kind of guy. Most of us are interested in the lead because we can shoot it.