I got another 5 gallon bucket of wheel weights today!

[bigarm]

Feel like a kid in a candy store with money to blow! Never in my life did I think I would be excited about wheel weights. Looking forward to melting them. Not so much the sorting first, though.

[RogerDat]

Sorting is fun, afterwards you have a bucket that you can weigh and say to yourself "that is X lbs. of ready to go lead WW's" Then you can look forward to smelting them into ingots. Satisfaction from a job done is always sweet but comes in many flavors.

Ok shooting them is more fun than sorting but still...

[Down South]

All I sort is the stick on WW's. Some don't even sort those. I melt/smelt under a controlled temperature. I don't have to worry about zinc melting this way and can scoop it off with the dross. But I was processing 4-5 buckets or more of WW at at time during the time that I was processing my stash.
Even if you are a pro at processing/melting/smelting WW's, I recommend doing it under controlled temps just in case you just happened to miss just one zinc WW in your sorting.
I don't even bother removing most of the trash, it makes good flux. The tire valve stems, lug nuts and other junk float to the top when the clips start turning loose anyway.

I do understand the joy in finding a 5-gallon bucket of WW. Even after all I have processed over the years, I still find joy in finding them.

[el34]

bigarm, what mix of clipons and stickons did you get? I hardly ever get CO, they re-use them so the few I get are because they're broken or otherwise unusable. And about 25% steel.

[bigarm]

I got mostly clip on's. Probably less than a quarter of stick on's. Getting more steel and zinc in this bucket than the last time. I am almost done, have just small ones left to do and it looks like I will get about half a bucket of lead clip on's, maybe a little more and maybe a coffee can or two of stick on lead weights.

[psychbiker]

I'm just getting into this and in Northern Cali it's near impossible to find wheel weights. Who wants to ship me some????

[imashooter2]

I'm just getting into this and in Northern Cali it's near impossible to find wheel weights. Who wants to ship me some????

Keep an eye on the Swappin and Sellin section. Alloy comes up there on a pretty regular basis...

[clearcut]

I'm just getting into this and in Northern Cali it's near impossible to find wheel weights. Who wants to ship me some????

norcal still has lead you just got to find it I'm in norcal too are you close to sacto?
CC

[psychbiker]

East Bay. Willing to drive if you got a lot or know sources. I'll pm you.

[fortrenokid]

Howdy Pard

Just a thot: check those ww's carefully 'cause there may be snakes in that leaden garden of eden. Years back I'd simply place ww's in my large melting pot, skim off the iron clips (oh yes, after sorting out tire valves, lug nuts, cigarette butts, candy wrappers, etc), flux it, and cast it into ingots. Went some years w/o ww's to melt down and recently got a big box of 'em from my tire dealer after buying a mess of new tires. S#%t if nearly a third of 'em were non-lead, mainly steel, zinc, and who-knows-what-kind of mystery metal. Some of the zinc ww's contaminated a (fortunately) small pot of molten lead and nothing I did could remedy it ... try casting molten metal that's the consistency of snow cone slush. I consulted several posts in this forum on how to remedy the contaminated metal but -- sadly I've never been accused of being the sharpest tool in the shed -- nothing worked.

So ... with that experience I stopped and carefully sorted each one by lead and non-lead and have done so with more recent batches. I did take the non-lead ww's back to the tire dealer and he was nice enough to take 'em back and let me substitute lead ones for 'em.

Wheel weights are great! I love 'em for casting bullets but, alas, they have more complications now than in the past.

Good luck and good shootin'

Fort Reno Kid

[markshere2]

I'm too chea.. .. err frugal to pay to heat up a bunch of steel / zinc/ garbage just to skim them off with the clips.

I also dislike smoking / stinking up the neighborhood with burning plastic/ rubber.

So I hand sort: Clip ons, pure lead, zinc, and steel all go into separate containers. I save out the valve stems too. Some day I will figure out a way to mine that brass.

[RogerDat]

I'm too chea.. .. err frugal to pay to........

I save out the valve stems too. Some day I will figure out a way to mine that brass.

I do admire a man that looks for possibilities and makes plans to pursue them. And I am just a wee bit jealous of those with the space to store those future project materials.

Wife is making noises about parking the car in the garage again, as if the car was not water proof geez.

[Down South]

Just looked at 2 1/2 bucket fulls in my shop that need cleaning. Some day I'll "get one of those round tuits".
Plus I've still got around 400 lbs of pure to clean. It came from a radiation building and has a paper backing.

[jsizemore]

I sorted before I left the scrapyard yesterday. 37 lbs of coww/soww , 72 lbs of Fe, 2 lbs of Zn. The Fe bucket was 3/4 full. Got the Pb and 2 muffin tins for $9. Pb ww pickings are getting slim.