sorting wheel weights question?

[hillbill]

i just scored a bucket of wheel weights at a local tire place and am in the process of sorting them out.im putting them in 3 piles. old style obviously lead weghts, painted weights that seem to be a little harder and what appear to be hard zinc weights. the painted ones i plan to use possibly for fish sinkers. can the zinc be melted and cast for sinkers possibly? any thoughts would be appreciated.

[Mustangpalmer1911]

Alot of the painted ones I had were lead. From my exp all the zinc WW have a Z or a Ze on them. To test them all I take a pair of side cutters and cut the WW the lead ones will cut fairly easy the steel and zinc wont.

[selmerfan]

When I sort and smelt wheelweights I do three things. First, I separate out all of the stick-on wheelweights and riveted wheelweights. Then I fire up the burner. Keep the melt at 650-700 degrees and you'll melt everything you WANT in your alloy and nothing you DON'T. Zinc melts at 787 degrees, so at that temp all of the zinc WWs float to the top with all of the steel clips. Skim them off with a heavy slotted spoon. Don't make it so much work! :) I have yet to examine every wheelweight as I sort them, I just grab the obvious stick-ons and obvious riveted ones. The painted ones are often lead, they just paint them to prevent reaction with aluminum alloy wheels.

[Charlie Two Tracks]

Hi hillbill, and welcome. I use the sidcutter method myself. The very first time I melted down wheel weights, I put them all in the pot, turned up the heat and waited for it to start to melt. I then put the thermometer in there and kept the temperature below 750 deg. I later found out that I had melted zinc in the process and had a terrible time with casting that stuff. The weights on the very bottom of the pot must have gotten much hotter than I thought when the mix first started to melt and there must have been a few zinc at the bottom. I go slow now and slowly smelt my mix. Real sloooow. I'm not saying this is what a guy has to do, I'm saying that for me.......... that's what works.

[selmerfan]

Charlie,
I was concerned about the bottom being hotter than the top as well - so I stirred them around alot as they heated to distribute the heat. It's a little more work, but a heck of a lot better (IMHO) than checking each one with a side-cutter. YMMV

[10 ga]

I separate my wheelweights. Stickons, large, and riveted are obvious. Getting a lot of steel stickons now. Riveted are usually steel some zinc. I start the pot with the easily picked out and obviously lead large WWs. then after the melt starts add the "general ore" of medium and small WWs. Makes temp control and getting the valve stems and caps, zinc, steel and dirt skimmed out easy. Zinc makes good fishing sinkers and etc but I sell mine with the rest of my scrap. 10 ga

[mtgrs737]

I sort out the easy stuff, like valve stems, rivited on clip weights and the steel weights that I see before smelting. I have been doing the slow heat up too keeping the heat down to preclude zinc contamination to my lead. It takes a couple of hours to get the first pot full ready for pouring into ingot moulds but I start it early and just check it every so often. I know from experiance where to set the gas valve to acheive the right temp. and I do check it with a RCBS thermometer occasionaly just to be sure I am not over heating it. It can help the first melt the next time if you leave an inch of lead from the last smelt in the bottom of the pot as this gets good contact with the bottom and transfers heat quicker. I am waiting for a nice day as I have accumulated about 4 buckets of ww's that need smelting. I dump them out on the concrete and use a shovel to load the pot. Smelting is my least favorite chore of this hobby but doing it save lots of money in lead costs over buying foundry lead.

[*Paladin*]

I'm too paranoid of getting zinc in my lead, so I hand-sort them and I still stand over the pot as it goes molten to catch any I may have missed. I usually only score a bucket at a time, so hand-sorting isn't a big deal to me. If I had 5 or 6 buckets sitting in the garage, I would probably just throw it all in the pot and skim at 650 degrees.

[1longshot]

I have done 5 smelts now and don't actually know if I have Zinc contamination. Of my five smelts 3 of the five are in definitive piles, so I can get rid of the rest if I have ruined them. The first 220lbs were done in haste and experimentation. I wish I would have bought a thermometer before doing those batches. I have since bought one, and when testing my melt temperature have not seen temps rise above 650 from start of melt to finish of pouring lead. I, like *paladin*, always stand near my pot from the beginning of melt to make sure I get the Zinc weights I have missed in my pre-seperation so they don't melt into my mix, and I fish them out before they do. They float up immediately when the lead melts. In all of my smelts I have pulled out un-smelted zinc weights right when the entire 120lbs of lead went molten. Hopefully I got all of the zinc weights out. We'll see. I get bubbles when I do the muratic acid test. But not violent frothing like with pure zinc. I also tested a lead wheel weight with muratic acid and got some bubbling too. So unsure at this point.

[arjacobson]

I'm too paranoid of getting zinc in my lead, so I hand-sort them and I still stand over the pot as it goes molten to catch any I may have missed. I usually only score a bucket at a time, so hand-sorting isn't a big deal to me. If I had 5 or 6 buckets sitting in the garage, I would probably just throw it all in the pot and skim at 650 degrees.

Thats exactly what I do. When the mood hits I go sort a few.

[FISH4BUGS]

I have about 30 buckets of ww's....some are three or more years old sitting there just waiting for some attention.....like sorting.
So far, I have sorted a full 5 gal bucket of stick ons, a large coffee can of zinc (although I have to say that the buckets I get now are seeing more zinc weights) and wound up with a fair number of buckets of pure wheel weights.
A thermometer will take care of the zinc issue. Keep it under 650 and nothing will melt that shouldn't. My smelts typically come in the fall if it isn't too windy.
I have some older ingots from about 10 years ago I have no idea if I paid attention to. There were far fewer zinc ww's then so I might be OK.
I'll mix it with known qualities of ww's and see if it still casts well.