Wheel Weight Metal?

[DonMountain]

Are clip-on wheel weights made out of different metals than they used to be? The last time I bought wheel weights they came from a tire shop back before mag wheels became popular in the early 1990's. And the gas checked boolits I have been casting with them all these years worked pretty well for me. Unfortunately I ran out of them (wheel weight metal) recently as I have taken back up shooting cast lead boolits again after several years of non shooting. And my wife's brother gave me about 100 pounds of wheel weights that he had taken off police car wheels when he was a mechanic for a police agency in a big, mid-west city. And these wheel weights look different and seem to be lighter than the lead ones I used in the past. Now I am trying to melt some of them down. What can I expect to see and how do I seperate the junk from the lead?

[ku4hx]

See here:
http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?t=148821

There is no standard for WW composition. It's whatever works for the maker for his intended application.

[HangFireW8]

What can I expect to see and how do I seperate the junk from the lead?

Keep the temps low to seperate the zinc weights, and then skim them off of the top. In general they have less Antimony then they used to.

HF

[44man]

Kalifornica says we eat too many lead weights and animals hunt for them on roadsides so who knows what is in some today.
It is frustrating and the best is to keep the melt around 600* and get rid of all that don't melt. Never keep poking them under the surface and turning up the heat. It just takes one bad egg to spoil things.

[Lizard333]

Kalifornica says we eat too many lead weights and animals hunt for them on roadsides so who knows what is in some today.
It is frustrating and the best is to keep the melt around 600* and get rid of all that don't melt. Never keep poking them under the surface and turning up the heat. It just takes one bad egg to spoil things.

Funny how this only happens in California. Around here, the birds eat bird seed. Funny...........

[DonMountain]

A bunch of them showed up looking like pieces of copper as they floated on top of the melted lead. And steel, and I guess zink? They looked like cast aluminum but were heavier. And the muffins I cast were soft as I could mark them with my fingernail. My old ones I couldn't do that with. But most of my molds are gas checked so maybe it won't be a problem as long as I can cast the boolits reasonably well with it? And around here the birds eat the cat food in the bowl on the side porch. And the cat drinks its water out of the bird bath in the side yard. And the wild turkeys are in the yard every morning looking for cat food.

[44man]

Animals in the rest of the country are not liberals! :-) Liberals want to ban everything because they figure we are not as smart.
Liberals are direct desendants of lead paint eaters. :veryconfu

[Jailer]

Liberals are direct descendants of lead paint eaters.

That line made me laugh. I think I may use it in my sig for my email.

[DonMountain]

So, with this soft boolit metal now should I upgrade to a 600 grain mold for my 45-70 and shoot at a slower speed than the 500 grain mold and give up trying to shoot the 6.5x55 Swed? And I don't like all this negative talk about the Liberals. My wife's children think I am a liberal because they keep coming and asking for more money all the time. And only 3 of them want to buy boolit molds with the money.