First batch of wheel weights...ever.

[ronbo40s&w]

Hi folks! My childhood best friend has talked me into casting boolits. Yesterday, after night shift working 12 hours, I stopped at a local mom-pop tire store. They treated me like a king and sold me a 5 gallon bucket weighing 113# for $38. Today, after sleeping awhile i sorted the bucket. 100# of lead weights, 8 # steel and 5 # zinc. This makes me happy. I am currently stockpiling and learning all i can before doing any smelting. I found the site and really appreciate the information and the mature attitudes here. At the age of 55, i want to enjoy this hobby mostly so i can shoot more. I can already see , however, the addictive nature of the hobby as it's own self-feeding sickness. I also was given three old tractor innertubes for free by these fine folks and I will make rubber sandbags to allow even more lead recycling. Between the bucket, some recovered range lead form my home pistol range, the loaded ammo I have yet to shoot and the commercial cast and plated bullets i have left in my reloading room, I should have over 100 pounds of actual lead to smelt as a good start. I will load and shoot the commercial stuff first and recover it so i don't forget the goal here...shoot more.
Anyway, i am an excited newbie and will keep on lurking. Briefly, can anybody give me a rough percentage to expect when the steel floats off this 100 pounds? I will find out eventually, but the mathematical minutia always fascinates me in any GOOD hobby.

God Bless!

Ron

[cabezaverde]

That is a pretty good ratio of lead ww to junk these days. Figure you will get about 75-80% yield if they are car weights.

[ronbo40s&w]

Awesome. thanks. I found a stainless steel two quart pitcher from my old trash business scrounging days and just made some muffin pan ingots of the stickon weights and some plumber's lead. Went without a hitch using a coleman propane camp stove. I also wore my osha painting respirator and plenty of eye and skin PPE. This is pretty cool.

[ronbo40s&w]

I scrounged around my house and garage until almost dark, so, I'm done, but this was a nice feet-wet exercise and it was enjoyable. 5 pounds down, 95 to go. Something tells me there's a larger setup in my future, but it HAS to be cheap or free. I am eyballing that extra scrap propane tank and the broken down gass grill with side burner for some fabrication and burner repositioning. The inside burner is really all that is wrong with it but we don't use it at all anymore. I think i can make a portable rolling system with a lid without any trouble at all, if I can get enough heat out of that burner with it inside the grill instead of outside. It won't cost anymore than a tank of propane to try it, and It will definitey cook burgers if it doesn't work for lead.
I already checked the cart for weight capacity..lol. It will hold me, so for my purposes it wil be fine.

[ronbo40s&w]

I ended up with 90# of lead. Mostly ww, with about 5 of pure lead and 2 of linotype. The total was very satisfying and i learned a lot in my first smelting adventure. I overheated some until oxydation formed by fluxing with the clips still floating on top...the combination of flame above and below the small pot really brought up the purple...lol. I shut it down and remelted it as is and poured nice silver ingots. Looks like I don't really need to do the grill and propane tank thing just yet. Now Iam going to order a bullet mold and see what i can do with my crude setup. I bought a ss ladel and a couple of spare spoons at everything a dollar. i formed a pouring lip in it with a ball peen hammer and my vice. works great.

[tbj555]

Sounds like you got a great handle on smelting for just starting out.

[Hardcast416taylor]

Save the steel clips and put them aside for a trip back to a scrap metal dealer along with the iron weights. The zinc weights can be sold to people that use this metal for other projects. Figure about a 20 - 25% loss due to clips and dirt.Robert

[runfiverun]

maaann you are so sucked into all this...

[ronbo40s&w]

Lol...I told my buddy.."the last thing i want is another hobby. I just want to shoot more!" He is evil.

Yeah..that percentage is about right by the time you add in the "sampler" a guy gave me of some scrap leads he is trying to get me buying from him at 75 cents/pound....i don't think so now that i see the yield from a bucket of tire store weights for 38 bucks. He only gave me 3 pounds of stuff, mostly not wheel weights. About a pound of type and a small piece of sewer pipe and a couple large truck clip ons. I think I had around 115-120 pounds before the smelt (there were some free weights from expert tire in that weight but most of those ended up being steel.), there were a few pounds of steel and zinc weights, some of which i missed in the sort and scooped out of the melt as they floated up....no problem. Thanks for the tip on scrapping those clips...i will probably cast some zink lures too. Good yield, and it was fun in a quantity like this. if I keep it this way it may be a "manageable" hobby after all. We'll see how hooked I get on the actual casting...lol...i se it getting pretty ugly, knowing me and technical hobbies. Anyway, thank you all for the support and for reading this.


God Bless!

Ron

[jabo52521]

Welcome to the "madness". Glad you're here.

Joe

[sleddman]

Way to get involved with casting. Your in trouble now

[bigjason6]

Welcome to the addiction fellow 40S&W slinger!

[ronbo40s&w]

Thanks! Yeah, the 40 rocks. Today i started filling rubber sandbags. Got two made before it rained on me and even managed to shoot some...put a square of red duct tape (a square ripped off the roll...2"x2") on the inner tube and let fly. Great easy way to draw and shoot. Minimal prep, more shooting. Now I need more sand to fill the rest of the available innertubes.

It's a sickness.

God bless!

Ron