I need to ask How bad are the roads in your area????

[Geezer in NH]

I am in NH and find no WW's at any intersections.

We have in my county very bad roads. Frost heaves for 3-4 months we stop at the really good/bad ones and no WW's found.

Don't know what a frost heave is , Think of a pothole without a sharp drop 3 feet wide and 1-1/2 deep every 25-30 yards. they appear now from late Feb/early March.

Speeds on our roads is 20-25 MPH no matters the posted speed. Violate the posted you will not get a ticket but you will get a repair bill 10 times higher.

Our town roads that are gravel are better than state paved roads but in 3-4 weeks will be mud season. Drive on a closed Mud season road and be prepared to pay thousands of dollars to repair it.

Many flatlanders from MA learn the hard way every year.

We have never found a WW in any parking lot. Gas prices will kill you, here go to the metal recycle center (no more called junk yard as that is not PC) or find a friendly Plummer.

[dakotashooter2]

Geezer... Have you ever talked to the guys that demo houses? I would think some of the older houses on your end of the country might still have lead water lines. About once or twice a year I get 50-100 lbs of water line from a demo guy I know.....

[Tatume]

The roads are fine, but the snow has melted and the mud is awful! I just came inside, and had to scrape big handfuls off of me.

[tazman]

The only good roads we have in this state are in Chicago area. The rest of the state just has to make do with the leftovers. Chicago tears up and replaces better roads than those in downstate.
Potholes are a way of life here. Road maintenance often fills the holes with gravel or blacktop, but it breaks up and comes right out again. We keep the shock absorber companies in business.

[bangerjim]

Roads in AZ are good! All the freeways are rubberized-coated these days and are smoothe as glass. Have not seen "potholes" since I left Mi 30 years ago!!!!!!

I have never found a single weight along or around any roads anywhere. But I would not bend over to pick up a single weight anyway. Probably Zn/Fe!

WW's are rapidly becoming the NON-goto source for us boolit casters. Years ago, WW's were our's for the hauling and they were ALL a good Pb alloy. In comes the owl-huggers and tree-kissers. And the Zn and Fe weights rapidly replacing our beloved Pb.

I quit even messing with COWW's 2 years ago. I am very lucky (according to what I read on here anyway) to have numerous salvage yards around that are stocked with lots of pure/Sn/hardball/alloy/solder for the taking at an average of $1/#. And those are CLEAN alloys that go directly into ingots with NO heavy fluxing or cleaning like I used to have to do with WW's.

Most of the LOTS of weights I see at the yards are Fe/Zn rich and not worth the time and money. All the tire stores have contracts with those recyclers and will not sell to anyone else.

Good luck with the lot lizard searching for a few WW's. If you cannot buy from local yards, get your Pb alloys from the kind people on the S&S section on here. Good reliable people! Or they would have been gone long ago!


bangerjim

[dragon813gt]

I live in PA which consistently has the worse roads in the country. Your think we wouldn't w/ the $.80 a gallon state tax on gas. In a few years it will be $1. Not only does the winter destroy the roads. This is the land of sink holes. Large portions of roads disappear quite often. I've never found a wheel weight anywhere. But I'm not about to look for them at intersections.

[C. Latch]

I have hundreds of COWWs laying loose in my truck bed. When I'm working in town it's common to find 10+ per day. Not a lot, but more than I shoot most days.

[NY_Treeguy]

I'm averaging 3 bent rims a winter in NY so.....

One of the parkways has heaved so bad it feels like 30 miles of speed bumps. One spot is so bad you need to slow to 20 mph to go thru it.

[Jack Stanley]

Our roads are much like our political leaders , rotten and crumbling .

Jack

[truckerdave397]

I was on a stretch of state highway today and it was like riding in a paint shaker.

[Bigslug]

I can see the 60 Minutes documentary now: all manner of experts decrying the crumbling of the American infrastructure, followed by the COWW scrounging caster who thinks bad roads are "JUST AWESOME!"

[geargnasher]

Go to CA, there are "thousands of tons" of WW piled high in every bar ditch. Just ask those that wrote the reports that got them legislated out of existence.

Gear

[rbuck351]

Yeah, I read some of that report about US cars loosing millions of lbs of wheel weights per year and there should be a certain number of tons of WWs per mile of road. Then I read of a fellow that walked a mile or so of the highway and didn't find a single WW. Maybe lead just dissolves a lot faster into the ground and streams in Ca than most other places. Probably why they're so worried about it there. That wouldn't explain what happened to the clips though.:shock: Hmmmmm!! I, being the concerned citizen that I am, always pick up any stray WWs I find along side the road before they can dissolve into the environment. Then I clean them and fire them deep into the earth where they came from so they will be safe from polluting the streams and rivers. Some of you may want to reconsider leaving those dangerous WWs along side the road. Just saying.

[tomme boy]

A couple of years ago, the city I live in was named the worst roads in the country. And they have not improved. If anything, they are worse.

[slim1836]

3.5 inches of snow at DFW airport overnight, a lot for this area. With yesterdays rainfall freezing overnight under the snow roads are very slippery.

TXDOT road crews are doing a very good job in my area, and a high of 39 today may melt some of it.

Slim

[SSGOldfart]

to wet and muddy to find the roads and I'm in Texas wettest year I can remember
Slim it's freezing as far south as Lake Sam Rayburn,burrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr:shock:

[JimA]

Our roads suck! Anyone who has had the pleasure of driving in Michigan will tell you that. The strange part is roads are constantly under construction and they never get better.

[Geezer in NH]

Geezer... Have you ever talked to the guys that demo houses? I would think some of the older houses on your end of the country might still have lead water lines. About once or twice a year I get 50-100 lbs of water line from a demo guy I know.....Have a plumber friend that doesn't cast so I get a lot of old plumbing pipe and cast iron joint lead from.

[sandman228]

I live in PA which consistently has the worse roads in the country. Your think we wouldn't w/ the $.80 a gallon state tax on gas. In a few years it will be $1. Not only does the winter destroy the roads. This is the land of sink holes. Large portions of roads disappear quite often. I've never found a wheel weight anywhere. But I'm not about to look for them at intersections.

pa here as well , I used to think our roads were bad till I went to salamenca new York for the 1st time last weekend wow

[tazman]

My neighbor is a small contractor that does tear downs and remodeling. I used to get lead from him occasionally until I got him started casting for a 45LC he bought.
Good thing I have other sources.

[Geezer in NH]

my neighbor is a small contractor that does tear downs and remodeling. I used to get lead from him occasionally until i got him started casting for a 45lc he bought.
Good thing i have other sources.
opsec, opsec!!!!!!!!!!!

[Plate plinker]

Bumpy there must be a bunch of water under there. Lots of pot holes ready to form this week. Found one road the other day where it heaved up a chunk probably 2.5-3 inches!

[waksupi]

I won't say the potholes get bad around here. However, if a Highway Patrolman sees someone driving perfectly straight, rather than dodging and weaving around holes, they may pull them over to check them for DUI.

[Geezer in NH]

Bumpy there must be a bunch of water under there. Lots of pot holes ready to form this week. Found one road the other day where it heaved up a chunk probably 2.5-3 inches!Won't even notice here in NH until 9-12 inch

[Geezer in NH]

I won't say the potholes get bad around here. However, if a Highway Patrolman sees someone driving perfectly straight, rather than dodging and weaving around holes, they may pull them over to check them for DUI.Very understandable, Our cops are the ones to follow they have been there done that on the roads!!! When followed by one they follow the car in the lead over the bad parts. It saves the town budget.

In the small town I live in the cops are neighbors and friends, unlike the new Gestapo types. Thank heaven for that

[tazman]

Very understandable, Our cops are the ones to follow they have been there done that on the roads!!! When followed by one they follow the car in the lead over the bad parts. It saves the town budget.

In the small town I live in the cops are neighbors and friends, unlike the new Gestapo types. Thank heaven for that

We used to have officers like that. Recently our police chief retired and the department changed. The new chief seems to like the militarized style of police work.
Hopefully I won't get to meet him or his minions.

[Harter66]

Az roads good ? East bound I40 from Seligman to Flagstaff is as bad an 99 in Ca. I can't think of a really bad paved road in Nevada there are always city streets that have pot holes. The last couple of miles over Donner on I 80 are a little ragged but normally it's chain pounded for 4-5 months a week on week off, freeze thaw freeze. Summers are probably harder on the asphalt than winters, and the concrete losses on both ends. We have temps in any given year from weeks of 0 to weeks of 100+ pretty much state wide. We do have several full stop hi way jct in the middle of nowhere that I keep meaning to stop and walk but there's always an appointment or exhaustion pushing me to point B.

[nhmikel]

NH roads are fun to drive in good weather but........
winter brings on SALT and frost heaves........

[xvigauge]

The roads here are very nice. No snow or ice. The sun is shining the trees are green and the temp is around 83 degrees.
xvigauge

[dakotashooter2]

Go to CA, there are "thousands of tons" of WW piled high in every bar ditch. Just ask those that wrote the reports that got them legislated out of existence.

Gear

Yup.. they were blaming hunters/shooters for the lead them dang condors were picking up, all the while we were scrounging, trying to get the WW for ourselves and unknowingly saving condors in the process.

[nagantguy]

Our roads suck! Anyone who has had the pleasure of driving in Michigan will tell you that. The strange part is roads are constantly under construction and they never get better.

That's right, mile and miles of construction and the roads are worse, highbtaxes high gas taxes and a new hike proposed on sales tax to.fix the roads but the billions collected for roads in the last 20 years sure haven't gone to fix the roads. Crumbling infrastructure follows the crumbling morality of our leaders.

[Geezer in NH]

We had a week of above freezing and rain. Back to below freezing -4 to 10. the road on my street is at 5-15 MPH this is a state paved road. Sinkholes to measured 12-14 inch and rock bumps till 9 inch. In 2 1/2 miles there are cracks pararell to the road with a measured 8 inch diff.

Flatlanders up for the weekend have damaged their vehicles with scrapes on road showing, along with mufflers, pipes and shocks laying in road.

9 mile trip to dump and back 1 1/2 hrs. A State warning sign (Frost Heaves)had a homemade sign posted under that said Wicked Nasty!!!!

[Yodogsandman]

Seems like a great time to lay off 700 NH-DOT workers and close two maintenance facilities in NH. Sometimes my state is just a plain embarrassment to it's citizens!

[brassrat]

Come to Ct. Constant repaving only to have the highway repaved 5 yrs later and/ or then, covered in tiny lines to fill cracks. A mile of road has 1000 miles of little squiggly, darker lines all over. They also cut every tree and shrub within 100' of the road on 100s of miles of highway and blew the mulch everywhere. Now they have 2/3 shutdown lanes on highways and miles of backups, oh and unbelievable potholes.

[oldpapps]

The roads are about the same as they have been for the last 30 years.....
Live on a dirt road except when it is mud. Then the mud gets packed and dry, then the only time the county does anything, they run a road grader down the road to brake up the hard pack so we have dust!
I have found tools out on the road, gave them back to the neighbor. Wheel weights, never.
Good friend is a plumber and he gives me what lead he can.
My youngest grand daughter's other grand father gave me a big old coffee can full of lead.... it was poured into the can. Guess I will use a torch to slowly melt it out of that can, drop by drop. The thought was their.
Local tire stores, scrap lead is all spoken for. Scrap yards are an 'in' only place. They won't sell anything.
It is a bite to have to buy premium lead but that is where I am at.

Enjoy,

OSOK

[chumly2071]

County roads are the worst I have ever seen them in my area (Central IL) and state highway and interstates are not faring much better at this time.
I had read recently (not sure how current of accurate it is) that the state legislature was trying to deposit the road funding into the general fund to prop up their overspending problem.

[Shiloh]

There are two massive potholes on a part of road that has never had them. We had a winter thaw and then deep freeze. Serious heaving.

Shiloh

[Geezer in NH]

Seems like a great time to lay off 700 NH-DOT workers and close two maintenance facilities in NH. Sometimes my state is just a plain embarrassment to it's citizens!Last year the selectmen in town complained to DOT and the surveyed the roads here. DOT said yep they are real bad but even with the raise in gas tax nothing can be done for 2 or more years as all the money is going into Rte. 93 from the MA border to Manchester As it needs another lane. Have to keep the flatlander tourists happy ya know.