Good news--bad news just sorted 4 bucets WWs

[10 ga]

Good news! Almost no zinc in the WW buckets. Bad news. MORE!, lots Fe in place of the zinc. The stick on WWs were about 40% Fe the rest were PB alloy, less than 5% were zinc. Clip ons were much less zinc than last sort but a lot more Fe. Of course it was about 10-15% labels, stems, valves, lugnuts etc... One source had only stick ons and broken clip ons. He said he was keeping all lead clip ons to reuse as he couldn't get any more lead clip ons. After I smelt this sort should have over 1 ton of lead in ingots. Guess that's only 10% of goal. As I only shoot about 50 lbs. of boolits a year, I'm a huntin kinda guy, coming ahead is a good thing. 10

[captain-03]

That has also been my experience lately ... LOT MORE Fe showing up and very little Zinc.

[Ole]

1 ton of ingots / 50lbs/year = Sounds like you have a 40 year stockpile. :Fire:

How much tin do you have? :mrgreen:

[Roundnoser]

Well, at least the bright side is.....Fe is better than zinc! Less chance of contaminating your lead!

[jmsj]

10ga,
We were pretty immune to zinc and Fe weights up here till lately also. As you have said zinc weights seem to be getting less but Fe weights are becoming more and more prevelant. My two suppliers have also slowed way down on the total volume of used weights I get from them. I used to get half of a 5 gallon bucket every two weeks(total from both) now it seems to be about a quarter of a 5 gallon bucket every two weeks.
Luckily, I have my own range behind the house and mine up the boolits a couple of times a year. Plus I have other places that I get lead from. For now, my supply goes up a little as time goes by. After lead wheel weights are no more, I think I will probably have to buy "enrichening"(spelling?) alloy.
Good luck, jmsj

[RP]

I am too finding more of the other stuff then lead in my WWs but I take what I can get when i can get it.

[mold maker]

Fe WWs aren't worth hauling to the scrapyard, but Zn is worth more than lead. So far I've saved 33lbs of Zn to trade for soft lead.
As stated, Zn WWs are becoming scarce, and the % of Fe is going way up. It must cost less to make the Fe.
I have found more Zn stick on weights lately, and the melting point is closer to soft lead, so mash them with pliers first.

[evan price]

So I got my last bucket sorted. 50% lead clip WW. Most of the stick-ons were zinc. A bunch of iron clip weights. I would say that close to a third of the bucket wound up in the junk bucket- valves, hardware, labels, zinc, iron, etc.
At least it was free. 60# of ingots!

[bobthenailer]

when i smelted 900 + pounds of WW this year i had about 90 lbs of zinc and steel wheel weights and 125 lbs of clips.