About 20 years ago, a friend and fellow shooter sold his tire shop and retired to Florida.
Before he closed on the shop, he called me and said to take all the wheel weights I could handle. Well, I took some 2000-2500 lbs of ww's and put them in my girlfriend's barn.....some 30+ 5 gallon buckets of ww's.
I did a monster smelt session shortly thereafter and had probably 300 lbs of ingots. I have been working off those since then.
We bought the house she was in so fortunately i did not have to move them. Sometimes I joke that we bought the house so I WOULDN'T have to move them.
I am now down to my last 30 lbs or so of ingots and need to smelt again.
I have been sorting zinc and steel ww's for a few days and will get about 200-300 + lbs of lead ww's to smelt. Yup...checking them one at a time.
A magnet tells me the steel ones. A scratch tells me the zinc ones. A nice little gouge from a screwdriver end tells me the lead ones. Either way, they are all getting recycled
There is something to be said for a 5 gallon bucket (or two - or three) of nothing but sorted LEAD ww's. Kind of pretty if you ask me.
Nice quiet time in the barn with a heater and radio going. The casting/reloading room is a converted horse stall that is actually fairly tight and can heat up to about 60 or so if it isn't too cold out there.
Winters are long and hard here in NH so I keep myself busy in the man cave. Cheap therapy.