Did wheelweights back in the "good old days" have 9% Antimony?

[earlmck]

I was fairly new to reloading and to boolit casting when I bought the Lyman "Reloading Handbook" 44th edition -- dated 1967. I've acquired a few more handbooks since then but I've never thrown one away. Thanks to fellow boolit caster HARRYMPOPE I now have a 38-55 to load for so there I was looking through the old 44th edition. Then proceeded to read some of their stuff on alloys (they used nothing but Lyman #2 for everything, including pistol target loads!)

They gave a couple different ways to mix up Lyman #2, one of which used wheelweight metal. But their formula for making the Lyman #2 with wheelweight metal depends on wheelweights having 9% Antimony.

I was doing a little bit of boolit casting back in the early 60's and would have used wheelweight metal. And I was casting for several different rifles plus 357 revolver by the early 70's, using straight wheelweight metal. Biggest part of my boolits over the past 50+ years have been made of straight wheelweight metal and a few days ago I would have said there has been no difference in casting properties and boolit weights from COWW over that span of time. And when I do mix up an alloy based on COWW I figure on it being about 3% antimony and half a percent tin.

So -- question for you "mature gentlemen" -- did wheelweights ever consist of 9% antimony?

[M-Tecs]

http://www.castpics.net/subsite2/GeneralReference/Whats%20with%20wheel%20weights.pdf

[lightman]

http://www.castpics.net/subsite2/GeneralReference/Whats%20with%20wheel%20weights.pdf

Thats a pretty well written and interesting article. But, I disagree with parts of it. BNE, a fellow member here, has a couple of stickies on FXR analysis that he has preformed that show wheel weights being pretty consistent. I smelt my years accumulation of weights during the winter and send him samples to test and these samples are consistent with his stickies. They are not exact, as laboratory quality stuff would be, but pretty close.

But to answer earlmck's question, I'm not sure. Sorry, not much help. I also have the older Lyman book showing that older weights have more SN and SB than newer weights. I'm still casting with weights that I collected back in the 70's and 80's so I guess that I need to send a sample for test the next time I send off samples.

[Dusty Bannister]

Maybe this from the CB-L post by Bill Ferguson "back in the day".

Sent: Jan 28, 2008 9:33 PM

Original spec was/is 3% antimony, 0.25 % tin, 0.17% Arsenic balance lead.

The report was the spec is still adhered to however there was 0.5% tin.

This has been the 'real' specification since the mid 1970s.

Have no idea why publications seem to be reluctant to request updated information.

Bill Ferguson

[earlmck]

Thanks for the link M-Tecs, I hadn't seen that article before. That's interesting about the differing alloy specs from different sources. But all that zinc and SOWW/COWW stuff is old news for anybody who has been using wheelweight metal for the last 20 years.

I got looking further and discovered that my Lyman "Handbook of Cast Bullets" (dated July 1958, so probably 1st edition?) has a chapter "Lead Alloys for Cast Bullets" which shows wheelweight metal being 90% Pb, 1% Sn, 9% Sb. So the Lyman folks were thinking 9% back there in the 50's anyway. But interestingly the same chapter shows a composition for "Ideal #2" metal of 10/1/1 which would be closer to 84/8/8 rather than the present "Lyman #2" of 90/5/5. I wonder if that change really happened or if the writer of that chapter got the composition wrong?

I am also thinking it might have been much harder to get an analysis back there in the day, and if the first person to state an analysis in print (which may have been the writer of the "Lead Alloys for Cast Bullets" chapter in my "Handbook of Cast Bullets 1st edition") was wrong he'd be quoted for the next two generations as gospel anyway.

I wish somebody with a bucket of 60-year old ww's would send a selection to our friend BNE for some of that XrF analysis. He'd give us the definitive report!

[Larry Gibson]

"I am also thinking it might have been much harder to get an analysis back there in the day, and if the first person to state an analysis in print (which may have been the writer of the "Lead Alloys for Cast Bullets" chapter in my "Handbook of Cast Bullets 1st edition") was wrong he'd be quoted for the next two generations as gospel anyway. "

More than likely what happened......such is the case all to often "back in the day" and even more so now with the advent of the internet.......

I was casting "back in the day" (that's the late '60s to me) and found older wheel weights to be fine for casting by themselves. An older friend who turned me onto using WWs had some analyzed in the OSU chemistry lab. The new WWs (from late 50s to late 60s) were closer to 95/3/2 back then....with some small variance of course.......

Linotype composition from printers also varied in composition back then depending on how many times it had been reused. Unless you actually have the alloy you have analyzed you really don't know and are only guessing. Kind of like guestimating velocities and pressures from manuals or other formula/programs.....you don't really know either unless they are actually measured.

[Rich/WIS]

There is an article in the NRA Cast Bullet book by Dennis Marshall about the composition of wheel weights, some older scrap (1970) was 5% but anything newer was about 3% antimony. I doubt you will find many from from the pre-70 era. I figure 3% when using it to alloy with a little tin and hardness seems to indicate that is about right as to percentage. On various forums have seen references to people still using the 8-9% figure and wonder how accurate their calculations are when smelting alloys. The same is true of range scrap, some consider it as near pure and others assume any number they like. IIRC a vendor here years ago posted that most range scrap was +/- 2% and I like that number and use it when smelting, and it seems to come out about right hardness wise. My feeling is if works like you want it to don't sweat the percentages.

[white eagle]

now were all types of ww the same make up
for instance truck,car,and semi ww made all the same?

[ole_270]

I've got about 50 lbs of ingots given to me by a co-worker before I retired. He said they were WW he and his dad had gathered when he was a kid, I'd guess sometime in the 60's. They are marked WW. Now his dad also ran a print shop so there is the possibility of some mixing. I sent a sample to BNE and it came back 4.4% Sb. Sn was 0.5% so not likely to have much lino in it. Arsenic was 0.25%

[earlmck]

I sent a sample to BNE and it came back 4.4% Sb. Sn was 0.5% so not likely to have much lino in it. Arsenic was 0.25%

Good info, ole. And that fits closely with the 5% figure from Rich/WIS's info. I could believe a 4.5 to 5% figure. I know I was making boolits out of wheelweights "back in the day" and I'd think something running 9% Sb would have been kinda' hard to work with successfully. And I'm just not remembering the casting qualities of straight wheelweight changing perceptibly over the past 50 some years I've been using it.

[gwpercle]

There is an article in the NRA Cast Bullet book by Dennis Marshall about the composition of wheel weights, some older scrap (1970) was 5% but anything newer was about 3% antimony. I doubt you will find many from from the pre-70 era. I figure 3% when using it to alloy with a little tin and hardness seems to indicate that is about right as to percentage. On various forums have seen references to people still using the 8-9% figure and wonder how accurate their calculations are when smelting alloys. The same is true of range scrap, some consider it as near pure and others assume any number they like. IIRC a vendor here years ago posted that most range scrap was +/- 2% and I like that number and use it when smelting, and it seems to come out about right hardness wise. My feeling is if works like you want it to don't sweat the percentages.

I wrote a letter to Dennis Marshall in 1985 asking about the current composition of clip on wheel weights and got this reply from him .
Clip On Wheel Weights
Antimony 2.75% - 3.02%
Tin .24% - .34%
Arsenic .12% - .16%
Copper .06% max.

He told me to use these figures when mixing and gave me the impression that it was a standard COWW alloy of the time . He also broke down the composition of the stick on wheel weights that were used on magnesium car wheels (mags) popular at the time .

Gary