Separating while melting wheel weights

[Rio]

Numerically this makes sense but their is probably a reason it won't work.

With th the almost 200 deg diffrence in the melting point between zinc and lead. Could a guy toss it all in together and skim out the zinc?
i have access to about 1000 lbs of wheel weights and am not looking forward to sorting it!

[country gent]

Look in the stickies I believe there are available materials to flux with that removes zinc from lead. The heat temp method may get most but some may mitigate ( like silver or copper do into lead)You dont always have to reach the alloys melting temp to blend it in. Antimony is a good example

[triggerhappy243]

I think if you sorted out the obvious zinkers, your better off. your wheelweight clips are zinc coated, so you will have trace elements of zinc anyway.

[brtelec]

I smelt at low temp and skim off all the steel, zinc and trash. Works great, just pay attention to your temp.

[Half Dog]

I hate to think of you struggling with that enormous chore. Suggestion - Send it to me. :)

[Rio]

Lol Half Dog. I just lucked into it. Put off buying for some time but I figure I will roll the dice and see what happens.

[John Boy]

Melting temperature of Zinc ... ​787.15 °F
Melting temperature of 93.5Pb - 5.0 Sn - 1.5 AG (COWW's) ... 564.8 F
Separate the Zinc COWW's out of the melt FIRST

[jcren]

Melt some known lead till you have a decent puddle then add ww gradually. Zinc etc will float high on the melt, lead floats just above the surface. As long as you melt isn't very hot (say 800+) you can easily spot and remove the trash before it starts to melt.

[Hickory]

If you do it as described in the OP just do 1 or 2 handfuls
at a time pick out the zinc before it has a chance to melt.
I've been doing this for several years and have had no problems.
The only thing to remember is, you have to pay close attention all the time and not get distracted.

[Rio]

Sounds like I better sort the wheel weights!! Me not getting distracted is like giving a fat guy a doughnut and telling him he can't eat it!! It's just gonna happen!

[NavyVet1959]

I always start out with just lead and then start adding everything without sorting out the steel and lead. Adding in the cold wheelweights will help keep the temperature from rising too quickly. I've taken everything I skimmed and then ran it through with a hotter temperature another time and recovered the zinc just for the 'ell of it. All that was skimmed that second time was just the steel clips and wheelweights. Don't know what I'll ever use that zinc for, but I have it, just in case.

[toallmy]

I tried sorting ww it did not work for me . I pick out the valve stems but that's it . It's hard for me to sort enough to get the pot a third full to get the party started with lead , after that I pile it up and watch the temp take out zink and clips and continue . At first I read the sticky on it and got a cheap thermometer .

[NavyVet1959]

Leave some lead in your pot so that you'll have a pool of lead to start with next time.

[lightman]

Some do and some don't. If you do you need to have good control over your temp. I pre sort mine because I smelt in a larger pot and the stuff on bottom can get hot quick. Just dump them out in a pile, grab a beer and go to sorting. Make an afternoon of it. A few zinc weights won't ruin a large pot of alloy but the fewer the better.

[funnyjim014]

Sort as you throw them in the smelter. I sort before and while im smelting. I smelt over wood fire and cant control the temp so easy. Those pallets burn hot and fast

[leebuilder]

Hi. I used to sort diligently. Now I just watch till the melt wont stick to the clips then stir and scrape. At this time the zinc and steel will float, skim and pour to ingot or refill with more COWW. I can usually spot the zinc and SOWW as i melt and separate. I trade the SOWW for COWW with the shot makers and BP guys. The zinc I save and give it away, I keep a small stash for making anodes.
Be well

[Hardcast416taylor]

Being retired I have a `little` spare time to hand sort wheel weights. I use a pair of 10" long end nippers to check questionable pieces. You will soon recognize a lead weight from an iron one (Fe) or a Zinc one (Zn) just by looking at them or how the clip is attached or the shiny ness of them. There is a code lettering on each weight indicating if it is Fe or Zn or Pb. It took me about 1 1/2 weeks of hand sorting to do 10 pails (5 gal. size) that all were 3/4 or more full of weights. I wound up with about 90 lbs. of non lead weights that were sold back to the scrap yard, along with the melted off weight clips from previous smelts, for some bricks of plumbers pure soft lead they happened to have.Robert

[mold maker]

If ya think it's too much work to separate them now, wait till your hunting for a few lead weights among the junk. That's when the certified lead retailers will raise the price on us.
Do it now and use till the Gov says quit. It's called Liberal back door gun control, coming to a state near you.

[mfraser264]

Yes you can do this, as mentioned, keep the pot temp low. I use a small kitchen strainer with a stainless steel wire mesh in the shape of a basket that an uncle put a nice sturdy handle on. Have melted 600+ pounds this way. All the clips are skimmed off and taken to the scrap yard and the zinc weights sorted out as they bring about .25 cents a pound so we get usable material back into the system and a little money too.

[bangerjim]

DO NOT trust the temp of your re-melting pot! Sort B4 ever starting. If you want those "free" COWW's, you have to work for them today with all the tons of zinkers in there. Fe can be easily removed with a STRONG magnet.

I would never trust a gas-fired re-melting pot of any kind to control temp below Zn liquidous temp.

Just be safe and take the time to sort. Just get yourself a bottle of HCl acid, end cutters, a 1" diameter steel rod about 12" long, a good stool for sitting, and "have lots-o-fun"! You got 'em......now sort 'em.

That is exactly why I quit messing with WW's over 2 years ago...free or not. My time is just too valuable to mess with the dirty old things. I buy all my alloys and pure locally and mix to what I want.

banger

[Springfield]

It also depends on the ratio of lead to non-lead weights. 5 years ago when I was getting WW for free, the non-lead weights made up maybe 10-15% of the total, so skimming off the zinkers was the easy way to go, and the steel WW didn't exist yet. Shortly after they banned lead WW here the ratio went way up, and it wasn't a good way anymore, especially when the zinkers and FE weights out numbered the lead. So, sort a bit and see what the ratio is and decide if you could realistically keep them out by skimming. I hate sorting weights, so I gave up a lot of 50/50 buckets, just not worth my time.

[472x1B/A]

DO NOT trust the temp of your re-melting pot! Sort B4 ever starting. If you want those "free" COWW's, you have to work for them today with all the tons of zinkers in there. Fe can be easily removed with a STRONG magnet.

I would never trust a gas-fired re-melting pot of any kind to control temp below Zn liquidous temp.

Just be safe and take the time to sort. Just get yourself a bottle of HCl acid, end cutters, a 1" diameter steel rod about 12" long, a good stool for sitting, and "have lots-o-fun"! You got 'em......now sort 'em.

That is exactly why I quit messing with WW's over 2 years ago...free or not. My time is just too valuable to mess with the dirty old things. I buy all my alloys and pure locally and mix to what I want.

banger

If you don't mind me asking, what is the 1'' dia. steel rod about 12'' long for?

[lightman]

You can tap the weight in question against it and listen for a ring or a thud. I just use the nippers and skip this method.

[bangerjim]

If you don't mind me asking, what is the 1'' dia. steel rod about 12'' long for?

Yes......it's all in the "RING" sound! Dull or thud.....you got lead. Sharper ring you have Zn or Fe.

Been around for years.

It is just another tool in your bag you can use to sort. Easier (at least for me) on the olde hands than constantly squeezing side cutters.

Use whichever method (or combo there of) that works for you. Just don't rely totally on re-melting pot temp!

Have fun!

banger

[Rio]

Thanks, I can just sort a bucket at a time. Will take longer but once I do that batch I likely won't have to again for quite some time.

[RogerDat]

Find something that is like a tray. Box lid from printer paper, or I use a plastic drawer from one of those stackable plastic drawer things. Pile some WW's in it and set it on your lap. Nip with dikes and toss in appropriate bucket. Refill tray, repeat.

Having the WW's in a tray on my lap made for a lot less reaching and turning, just pick it up an inch and nip, then toss. Less wasted motion. I do them while I watch a movie and find I can get 1/2 to 2/3 of a bucket done during the movie.

I would NOT be dumping WW's into molten lead - do a search on tinsel fairy - any moisture on those you dump in and you get an explosion. And if you trap zinc ones against bottom they can get hot enough to melt before the rest go liquid for them to float in. A small amount of zinc won't really hurt but like anything you shoot for perfect so that when some slip through it isn't a big problem.

Good suggestion to leave a 1/4 inch of lead in the bottom of the smelting pot. It is in 100 contact with bottom of pot so it will liquefy faster than loose WW's and that will help transfer heat to the WW's you have stacked on top of it before you turned the heat on. One thing you can do by paying attention. As the bottom half of the WW's melts the pile will settle allowing you to add more to the top without dumping WW's into molten lead. Of course this works better if you don't have a pile of zinc or steel in the mix. I find I can feed in an extra 40% of WW's into the pot without ever dumping WW's into molten lead. Using Harbor Freight Dutch oven.

[Chris24]

I sort the zinc out as much as possible. I have used cutters, but even a steel clip will work in a pinch. It will shave fragments off of a lead weight, but won't do anything to zinc. Fortunately, I get my WWs from a tire shop that does almost all lead. Still, I get a few zinc floaters and scoop them off with the clips. I messed up a while back, because I had a thick "skin" on my lead. I must have let quite a few zinc weights slip through. I scooped a lot of it off, then mixed the pot 50/50 with known lead WWs and fluxed. It came out very clean.

[OS OK]

Holy Cow…There was a day recently where a man would be proud to sort this out properly and do it right…get his hand dirty and spend the time investment required to reap the reward of the stash.
All this talk about shortcuts and controlling the pot temp. with a 'cheap' temp. gauge…what has happened out there?

Maybe…there is a iPhone app that will do it for you!

[triggerhappy243]

OS OK, Dont toss your i-phone in the melt to read the temps. The gold in the circuit board will contaminate your lead. LOL..... I could not resist.

[irishtoo]

wow , a thousand pounds, im jealous. i dont envy you the chore of separating all that, but as said probably the best way. sort as you feed the pot. pour the ingots. start over. get tired, stop, do more later. i eyeball them, the ones i cant id, i use nippers. that way is easy with very little practice. i did, out of curiosity, hold a the end of a long lead ww in a pot of lead with a temp of 675f it melted at a count of 15. i then did the same with a marked zinc ww, it never melted or even got soft. with a good pot thermometer, hold the temp down to just melt the lead and you should be fine. irishtoo

[mold maker]

Folks take this with a grain of salt, but a thermometer only measures the temperature of the lead immediately around the probe. It has no way to measure temps at the bottom of the pot where the hottest flame hits. It has no way to read temps on the side of the pot unless held in contact.
When you add to or fill a pot with un-separated weights, Murphys law says that's where the zinc will be.
There is only about 100 degrees difference between the melting point of lead and zinc. It takes more than the melt temp to actually melt a pot of lead.
Do you really think that with a 4000 degree flame on the outside of the pot, that there won't be enough (just an added 100 degrees) heat somewhere in, or on the surface of the pot to melt zinc?
With WWs as hard to come by, as they are becoming, can you really take that chance?
The only saving grace is that up to 2% zinc will only harden your lead a little. Above that is where you encounter problems.
Have all your WW ingots been the same hardness?
Could this be the reason?

[gwpercle]

DO NOT trust the temp of your re-melting pot! Sort B4 ever starting. If you want those "free" COWW's, you have to work for them today with all the tons of zinkers in there. Fe can be easily removed with a STRONG magnet.

I would never trust a gas-fired re-melting pot of any kind to control temp below Zn liquidous temp.

Just be safe and take the time to sort. Just get yourself a bottle of HCl acid, end cutters, a 1" diameter steel rod about 12" long, a good stool for sitting, and "have lots-o-fun"! You got 'em......now sort 'em.

That is exactly why I quit messing with WW's over 2 years ago...free or not. My time is just too valuable to mess with the dirty old things. I buy all my alloys and pure locally and mix to what I want.

banger
As you get older you start doing things smarter !