Truck WW

[bslim]

I was fortunate enough today to stop by a truck wrecking yard. Asked them for WW and the owner dug up 2 x 5 gal pails, not quite full but at least 300 lbs. worth. when I was going thru them I noticed some really big WW's and remembered somewhere it was posted that truck ww's might be a different composition? Do I need to worry about mixing them with regular car WW's?

[Charlie Two Tracks]

You will have no problems at all. There may be a small difference in BHN but not enough to worry about. If you want, you could save the big weights until you get a hundred pounds or so and have a slightly different alloy. The key word is slightly. I've found that (for me) it is nice to smelt up as big a batch as I can and then mark them. That way I will have a constant alloy to work with. That is great that you found this source of lead. Get all you can, while you can.

[bslim]

We're in the same boat you are. More and more steel and zinx WW's coming out and lots of the tire shops around here will only deal with the scrap recyclers. Corporate policy for most of the chain tire stores. "Walmart/Costco". Every batch I smelt is marked and labeled for future reference. At least then I have a known alloy to play with later. My problem is going to be storage in the very near future.

[Trapaddict]

I do know that when I tried to use truck wheel weights to make shot out of on my Stewart shot machine, everything went south in a great big hurry. There is something (I have heard some say copper) in that material that just raises hell with the machine. I simply will not flow through the drippers properly. I found I needed to dilute it down a lot with regular WW metal to get it to work correctly.

Jeff