Not a Lot O Lead

[sirgknight]

Have yall noticed how the amount of wheel-weight lead keeps getting less and less in buckets. I acquire my lead in 5 gallon buckets from local shops, dealers, etc., and have done so for years. I still have a couple of shops that continue to give me all of their used wheel weights. In the not-too-distant past a (roughly 180 lb) bucket of weights would generate about 130 to 140 lbs of usable lead. Most of the waste was attributed to the clips, dirt, grease, nails, rubber, etc. Then we started seeing the stick-on lead weights; now we have iron and zinc thrown in. My last bucket of weights (which I just smelted and poured into ingots) generated 42 pounds of wheel weights, 47 pounds of stick-on lead and the remaining 96 pounds was waste. Believe it or not almost 1/3 of the stick-ons were also iron or zinc. I'm afraid that reloading as we have known it in recent times is in the process of a very costly transformation.

[ReloaderFred]

Lead wheelweights are going to get harder and harder to find. Most of the larger tire companies have already gone to steel or zinc weights, and my last new truck (2010) came from the factory with zinc weights on the wheels. The EPA set a goal of five years to eliminate lead wheelweights, and that was a couple of years ago.

Grab what you can, while you can. I've pretty much given up on wheelweights as a source of lead, and now concentrate on recovered bullets for my raw materials. Even with those, there is a certain amount of steel that has to be removed with a magnet, and bullets made from sintered products, i.e.: non-toxic ammunition.

Hope this helps.

Fred