My last WW source has dried up

[Shiloh]

WW have REALLY become scarce for me. Range scrap is becoming mu go to supply. Seems to be enough hard lead in what I scavange to give decent alloy. Rifle boolits get sweetened with a bit of lino if they need to be harder.

SHiloh

[AlaskanGuy]

Here is an idea for you guys... Head out to a auto junk yard, armed with COWW pliers, and come out with pleanty. Especially the old scrap yards with really old cars... I did this when i went to anchorage last and got several buckets full.. Yes it took time, and effort, but it was free... Once you get the pliers, resist the temtation to use them in parking lots....

[dakotashooter2]

Can't get WW's at any of the tire stores in my area, they all recycle to Interstate or other companies. I've even offered to match what Interstate pays per pound but was told that a paper trail is needed for proper EPA regulations. I've a buddy in roofing and he is keeping the lead flashing pulled off roof vents and melting it down. Can't get him to give me any though he shoots a .54 caliber muzzle loader and goes through a lot.
I'm shooting plinkers and low loads into a big old chunk of dried pine log, plan to split it and pop the slugs out in about another year. Bet I've got 10 lbs of lead in it already.
Been getting my WW lead from on line auctions and need to get more soon.

While they may have to document that it goes to someone who is certified to handle haz mat, who is going to know what kind of quantities they have coming in? Another option is to get haz mat certified.......

I'm fortunate in that I work for a municipal govt. We have some contractors that are still pulling out lead water lines and I take all that I can get my hands on. What I really need to do is save up some cash. A former boss of mine has at least a couple tons of lead stashed away because he used to make fishing jigs for his family and friends. He has given up on that and I need to talk to him before the stash disappears or he passes away.

[dondiego]

I had a friend who worked for the City and he got me a couple of hundred feet of 1 inch lead water main when they dug it up. It is dead soft lead and I must have several hundred pounds of ingots smelted and still have 20 feet or so of the pipe. Unfortunately, he doesn't work for the city anymore so that source dried up. There is a printing company called Vistaprint that was advertising 200 business cards for $10. I had some made up for my "Recycling business". I do recycle lead you know? I recycle wheelweights and other scrap lead products into shiny new boolits and deposit them into my hazardous waste landfill. Some people call it my backstop but I know better!

[WILCO]

I feel your pain

Same here. When the wheel weights dried up, I found a source for indoor range scrap and then that supply went south for a time. Currently, I have enough lead that I've purchased, scavenged and was gifted, to last for many moons. As for the OP, keep putting the word out to friends that you need lead. Check estate sales for lead sinkers, shop the scrap yards and don't forget there's the online vendors here.

[tengaugetx]

If you know any phone company employees ask them. They use lead for several different applications. Not wheel weights but a good source of lead. It's worth asking if you know of anyone. You can use it as a mix to make your wheel weights or range scrap go farther.

[Ohio Rusty]

My local source has stopped also. The owner of the tire shop is now re-using the WW's he takes off tires instead of buying new ones to save money. I will often walk berms along intersections to find orphan WW's If I find a couple, I'm happy !! They get added to what little I have left. I've started adding pure lead to my WW's (50/50 alloy) to make it last longer.
Ohio Rusty ><>

[bangerjim]

I got onto casting at the tale end of buckets of WW's for free. Then the tire shop guys wanted to scrap them for extra money. ( cant blame them)

Now the tire shops have "vendors" that take all the old WW's

I'm glad I got while the getting was good.

Yes, sadly the days of free COWW's are gone for most if not all. I have may hundreds of ingots of the stuff cleanly smelted and neatly stacked in storage for my "old age"!

Besides......I have had my fill of smelting filthy WW's.

Now my quest at scrap yards is for alloys with Sn/Sb/Bi and clean pure lead to dope to the alloys I want.

With the "greenies" on the loose in DC, any form of the dreaded element Pb will become harder and harder to find.......at any price.

banger

[old beekeeper]

jmsj

If it is any consolaton, the battery company is probably going to get a big surprise. I live in Portsmouth, VA and my cousin is in charge of a large dealership, so I have first dibs on their wheel weights. My last bucket yielded about 45% steel, 35% zinc, the rest were a combination of lead and whatever is the new stuff they are putting on cars. Some of the lead is coated in some kind of stuff to match the wheel covers and just adds to the rest of the krud to be scraped off. My son lives in Camden, NC, building all of Dennis Anderson' Grave Digger and has access to a lot of small dealers, and the last three buckets were just about the same, mostly steel and zinc, with something which looked like rubberized plastic. So I guess the battery company is having a problem finding lead for their batteries, but I think they are going to be mightely surprised if they are paying a premium price for the wheel weights they get from the dealer. Since lead is finding itself among those things that environmentalists are against, and considering how "touchy feely" our government is getting, I think it will not bee long before we will be scraping the bottom of the barrel for lead. At least that is the way it seems to be here on the east coast.

Beekeeper

[Boyscout]

My brother came upon a source for free wheel weights just recently and has brought me about 200 lbs. If the first sort is any indicationof my yield, I am going to get about 30% Fe/Zn. I am sorting the SOWW out and treating them as pure lead for my purposes.

The source was interested in some 9mm reloads but I do not do 9 mm. I purchased some Winchester FMJ as a thank you as I do not feel comfortable giving handloads to strangers especially on something I have not worked up and tested myself. If he had a friend who reloads, I would gladly purchase a Lee 9mm mold and return some of his lead back to him.

Saturday, I picked up 100 lbs of Linotype for $1.00 lb. from a local museum which had given up on the idea of setting up a printing press. My source buys, sells and trades printing equipment and is only interested in typset he can reuse. I got a lot of spacer bars, shims, and 6 pt. slugs. If the budget allows, I am going to continue to purchase whenever I can. I feel fortunate to have stumbled into this one as it came up in casual conversation at work one day. I think I have gotten about 300 lbs now.

[dondiego]

Word of mouth has worked out for me. I tell everyone that I know to save wheelweights, lead, tin, solder, pewter, etc. for me. You would be surprised at what shows up now and them.

[surfanarchist]

I can still get COWWs for free but it takes a couple of month to get three full 5 gal buckets. After sorting I might have almost one decent bucket of weights. This past weekend I sorted and got my one bucket which I melted yesterday. That yielded about 130 lbs of clean lead. I've been doing this now for only the last year and the lead to zink/steel/whatever ratio even over the one year has gotten worse. I'll keep plugging away as every once in a while I get lucky but it's deminishing.

[novalty]

My source unfortunately isn't free, but they guarantee I'll get all lead wheel weights--as they'll exchange any zinc or steel that is missed in sorting for equivalent weight of lead. So far I've purchased 500lbs of wheel weights from this year--which I estimate will yield about 400lbs of clean lead ingots. I've asked around to a bunch of friends but it hasn't yielded any additional results yet. My father-in-law who taught me to cast, runs his own garage, and can't even get in enough lead wheel weights to keep up with his own casting needs.