Is the God of Gelena angry?

[Gtek]

Went to life long hunting, fishing, drinking, bud's shop today to have a couple tires
moved around. Been a long running joke they show up with no clip ons and require balancing, I score a couple buckets a year off him. I was talking it up with the young man working the tire machine and noticed the 3/4 full 5 gal. sitting there. Sliding into the office, hey you want me to change out that bucket for you? Real look on his face shakes no. His price for new has went through the roof and he is recycling them back on tires. He did tell me I could go through and get all the stickies which is better than nothing, couple pounds. Those of you which have an easy source - sleep well my freinds, it is getting ugly down here in Florida, maybe we are right behind Kalifornia!
Raw metal cost? Green / toxic ****? Have we had a bad Boolit that has angered the God of Galena? I am sitting on a little, but all of a sudden I NEED MORE! I NEED MORE!
Depressed Gtek

[Gtek]

I know Galena not Gelena, I said drinking buddy.

[hillbill]

it aint gonna get any better.

[a.squibload]

At a scrapyard the guy would only sell me 5 lbs, they do wheel balancing,
he re-uses them. I thought that was illegal 'cause they might fly off
but a lot of places do it.

[t_dickinson]

At a scrapyard the guy would only sell me 5 lbs, they do wheel balancing,
he re-uses them. I thought that was illegal 'cause they might fly off
but a lot of places do it.

I know it's done but re-using is a crappy thing for them to do. One of my sources says that the weights are included in the price of balancing. He makes double his money on the new weights and then some more when I stop in.

At .30/lb he can make all he wants from me!

[9.3X62AL]

My overall take on this subject is that the real gods of bullet alloy these days are the tire dealers--scrapyard owners--and metals brokers. They all know very darn well that they hold a key to bulletmaking, and aren't about to waste an oppurtunity to hose us BIGTIME.

It has always seemed strange to me that a commodity being disallowed for tire balancing would gain in value as its desireability for a purpose was in decline. Some other factor MUST account for its price spike, and one of those factors is certainly the panic-buying of ammunition components that has continued since 2008--though now moderated to some degree.

For my part, if I have to pay buccaneer prices for casting metal, I'll pay it for guaranteed assay material AND have it delivered in ready-to-cast form. I got THOROUGHLY torqued at a local gunshop owner and his ridiculous pricing on short-weighted mystery metal ingots about a year back. Jerk. I got #2 alloy from Rotometals for just a few cents more per pound, delivered.

The days of self-reliance as to bullet metal acquisition are winding down, I'm afraid. We will be paying more for our metal, so I will make it my business to get the most for my dollar possible.

[Bwana]

The wife went to visit her father Saturday and returned with two more five gallon buckets full of WWs. It did cost me $70.00;but, should result in 150lb of WW and 20lb of pure pb.
I usually visit with her; however, the OKC Gun Club IPSC match was that day. Finished 9th in Production. It had been an interesting week and the match just capped it off.
I have a pretty good FIL.

[a.squibload]

...wasn't so bad.
Stopped at a tire store I got WWs at before, "we recycle now".
Stopped at a truck tire place, "we don't have any". Told him I saw some in a bucket
as I came in through the shop, didn't push though.
We talked for a while, I think he wanted to know that I wasn't just gonna recycle them for money.
He knew something about lead for muzzleloaders.
Ended up giving me 102 lbs, and had a couple guys load 'em in my truck!

2 lbs of stickons, 10 lbs of steel WWs and bucket, and 90 lbs of long heavy truck weights.[smilie=w:
(NO ZINC.)

Never hurts to ask.

PS: finally sorted the free 80 lbs I got a couple weeks ago, 2 steels, 1 zinc, 3 valve stems.
Life is good...

It's a tall bucket.
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/_69sguoFlVzY/Tc4-SBREKjI/AAAAAAAAANM/Wg9EUny34fg/WWs165.JPG

Notice the 8- and 10 oz truck WWs? Hey, I don't get much chance to show off.
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/_69sguoFlVzY/Tc4-RQfkXUI/AAAAAAAAANE/r6EDI5bykrk/WWs166.JPG

A 6-oz WW marked "LIGHT". Must be a joke. Also found a couple marked WARDS,
wonder how old those were?
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/_69sguoFlVzY/Tc4-Rpm5wtI/AAAAAAAAANI/4OV8F-sHFCk/WWs167.JPG

And no, I don't have anything better to do right now.

[Defcon-One]

My overall take on this subject is that the real gods of bullet alloy these days are the tire dealers--scrapyard owners--and metals brokers. They all know very darn well that they hold a key to bulletmaking, and aren't about to waste an oppurtunity to hose us BIGTIME......

I don't agree. My dealers are pretty good to me. I never feel like I am getting hosed, if I did, I would not go back.

There are some good guys out there who really get what we do and want to help us do it. Our job is to seek them out, make friends and give them something back so that it is a two way street.

One dealer ship that moves a lot of tires and therefore wheel weights near by has a manager who collects Duck Decoys. I told him that I could make him some decoy weights for his displays and he lit right up. I dropped off ten of them (5 lbs. total weight) last week, a day after he gave me a bucket of 40 lbs. or so. I hope that will help keep the supply coming for a while.

He was really pleased and so was I. The relationship matters even more now that the supply is drying up!

[cbrick]

I haven't had a problem getting hosed as much as I have getting them to let loose of any. Offering to pay, offering pizza and beer for his guys has little effect lately. They just won't turn loose of them.

Been 3 years or more since I've gotten a single weight from a tire store that had an Interstate Batteries sign in the window. Seems that if you want to sell Interstate Batteries in your shop you sign a contract that says Interstate gets all of your old weights. Or so I have been told many times at many different tire shops. I wonder what Interstate is going to do as all the used weights start turning into all zinc and/or steel?

Rick

[lylejb]

I wonder what Interstate is going to do as all the used weights start turning into all zinc and/or steel?



that's easy, SELL IT.

The price of zinc is near the price of lead, and was higher at one time.

the steel isn't nearly as high, but when your getting tons for free, it's pure profit .

[Ervin]

I have a local scrap yard that gets a lot of lead. I get lead (?) for 0.50 per # and ww for 0.22 per #. I give him a hard luck story about steel and zink. A lot of the lead pipe has heavy brass pieces that I sell back to him for 1.60 per #. The lead (?) is pipe, roofing, unknown, telephone cable (rare), etc. The last batch had about 2 # of those little round meter wire seals/disks.
Ervin