Is There A Consensus On Wheelweights?

[Guy La Pourqe]

If I had to critique Cast Boolits, I would be hard pressed to name one single thing wrong with the forum. The guys are awesome and helpful, but on some things - there is a little too much info. I have heard guys saying that wheel weights are an excellent source of essential vitamins and scrap lead.:smile:

Others are saying there is too much aluminum in them and that they are a waste of time. Can I ask you single shot BPCR that question? Not to insult anyone - but I tend to get my best information from this group when I dabble in casting. Is it still worthwhile to hit up the tire shops?

Any advice is, as always - sincerely appreciated.

[fc60]

Greetings,

For BPCR bullets, I use 20:1 Lead:Tin alloy.

Scrounge Lead roofing vents from the local scrap yard.

Finding good quality Tin is a bit more challenging.

Cheers,

Dave

[Der Gebirgsjager]

The problem with wheel weights as a source for lead now days is that the newer zinc weights tend to be mixed in with the good ones. The tire shops don't separate them out, just toss them all in the same bucket. You have to sort through them, and if you bought them by weight you're only getting half of what you paid for (the lead ones), and you may miss a couple and mess up your mixture. But, I'd say if the price is right and you've got the time to carefully sort through them they're still a good source of boolit metal.

That having been said, you're lucky to find a shop out here on the left coast that will sell them to you, as some fishing sinker guys have them tied up with contracts to take everything they scrap out. I got lucky about 15 years ago and found a shop with an owner who would only sell to shooters. I got a lifetime supply, with very few bad ones in the mix. I still sort them carefully, and use straight wheel weights for my casting. Sometimes I've added a small bit of tin, usually in the form of bar solder.

DG

[bangerjim]

My thoughts on WW;s................."forget about it"! Way too much Zn, Fe, garbage in there today to even mess with. I quit on COWW's over 4 years ago and have not looked back since. Way too many good clean sources of Pb and alloy out there.

A little Sn goes a long way. Look for food-grade MARKED (!) pewter in junk stores. I have over a 150# of Sn and that will last me 2 lifetimes at the rate used in good alloys.

[imashooter2]

First post nailed it on lead for BPCR shooting.

As for COWW... I’m with Jim on this one. WW are no longer worth the trouble to scrounge. If someone throws a free bucket at you, say thank you, but spending effort on them isn’t something I’m interested in.

Range scrap is the new WW.

[uscra112]

Why is this in the Single Shot Guns forum?

[imashooter2]

Because the original post asked about single shot BPCR shooting. Then the conversation morphed as conversations on Cast Boolits are wont to do. :coffee:

[Capt.Red.44]

I still use COWW and tin when available. I dont value my hobby time in terms of dollars though. If you sort carefully, removing zinc, plastic and steel from each bucketful, then they are a wonderful source of alloy.

Several Utube videos are Available on sorting methods. Look for Elvis. Hes a wealth of info on many topics. It generally takes me a day per bucket to sort, melt , flux the pot 3 times and cast ingots. I only add tin to the pour pot. 25$ per 50lbs of coww is a lot cheaper than buying 23$ per 5lbs of ready made casting alloy .

Also due to arsenic content they respond to heat treating very well ( No need for any extra antimony). Another forum has some awesome info on this. ( new to forum , so I dont know if I can post a link here to the articles on another forum)

I generally use .3lb pure tin from rotometals in the cut wire pieces form. Its pure, nothing extra to worry about. Tin is up to 25$ a pound but its worth the additional cost to me due to COWW being free. GOTTA LOVE LIVIN IN SMALL TOWN USA.

[Capt.Red.44]

Hope I dont cross a line here. But heres the info on Heat treating COWW alloys. They are infinitely more eloquent on the subject than I could possibly hope for.

http://www.lasc.us/HeatTreat.htm

[marlinman93]

I've never heard of any wheel weights having aluminum in them, and can't see any reason aluminum would ever be chosen to add weight to balance? It's way to light to use as it would take a large piece to begin with.
I have seen wheel weights made of cast iron, and zinc, and either wont work for bullets. Zinc can really raise heck with bores, and cause leading issues, even after you stop using it. If you use wheel weights be sure you're positive what the weights are made of!
I leave unknown wheel weights alone, or use them to cast fishing sinkers, not bullets.

[bangerjim]

Hope I dont cross a line here. But heres the info on Heat treating COWW alloys. They are infinitely more eloquent on the subject than I could possibly hope for.

http://www.lasc.us/HeatTreat.htm

With the modern powder coating technologies, there is no need to water quench alloys to gain hardness. I shoot 95% of my boolits +PC at 9-12 hardness. Never any smoke, never any leading. The perceived need for hard lead is old school thinking. Only on super high velocity loads do I use anything harder than 12 (+PC).

[Bigslug]

"Is it still worthwhile to hit up the tire shops?"

If you have a plutonium-powered DeLorean with the ability to take you back 40-50 years . . .

Even if you live in something resembling Free America where the eco-Nazis are afraid to come out in daylight, you're still going to have "foreign contaminant" showing up in the bucket from various sources. By the time you sort through all of that to get clean lead. . .and miss a few zinkers and screw up the whole pot anyway. . .you'll be considering the wisdom of ordering known quantities from Rotometals or scrounging the berms.

When I started casting, I was fortunate enough to land two "legacy" stockpiles of COWW - gone are the days when you can just melt it all worry-free.

[Guy La Pourqe]

Well thanks fellas.

I will see what I can find at the scrap dealers I suppose. Good grief... I am trying to find bullet moulds and they are unobtanium right now. Everyone is pretty much out!

[marlinman93]

With the modern powder coating technologies, there is no need to water quench alloys to gain hardness. I shoot 95% of my boolits +PC at 9-12 hardness. Never any smoke, never any leading. The perceived need for hard lead is old school thinking. Only on super high velocity loads do I use anything harder than 12 (+PC).

Modern powder coating is fine for modern steel barrels. But I would never shoot powder coated bullets in any of my 1800's single shot rifles. Nor would I shoot jacketed bullets in them. These old BP era barrels are softer steel, and I wont shoot any bullet that's got a hard coating of any type in them.

[alamogunr]

I quit scrounging WW almost 10 years ago. I had drastically overestimated my shooting activity and ended up accumulating over 2 tons of "clean" WW metal. Along with that I had tin in various forms like pure tin from a development process at work(before I retired) and quite a few 25# rolls of 40/60 solder.

If I needed lead for casting boolits, I would probably just buy from RotoMetals. Sorting out the zinc, steel and garbage is tiring, dirty work. Since I don't hunt I'm satisfied with the metal I have and just throw in an estimated amount of solder. As long as I get good sharp bases and no wrinkles, I'm satisfied. I also don't push the velocity so leading hasn't shown up due to varying boolit diameters due to inexact metal composition.

I've bought several boxes of powder coated boolits from a commercial operation less than a quarter mile from me. I'm eventually going to try PC but for now regular lube/size or tumble lube works quite well.

BTW, eliminating shipping cost from the purchased boolits gets close to break even if my labor is worth a couple of $$ an hour. IIRC, a box of 825 135 gr, 9mm boolits cost me $55 picked up.

[FredBuddy]

To the OP:

Many on this site could be helpful
to you if we knew your location.

For example, if you were close to me
you may be able to use a mould I
have that you are interested in.

[Ron60]

I shot a moose a few years ago with a fairly stiff load (don't recall specs) and a 415 grain bullet I cast using straight wheel weight (45/70). The bullet hit a rib and broke into pieces. The rifle was a C. Sharps Action I stocked for a friend and he let me use it for the hunt. I now have a .450 Alaskan (Win M-71) and have a bunch of rounds using the same 'boolit'. It's a hotter load and so I'm concerned it may break up rather than penetrate. Both rifles shot into the same hole at 50 yards and did about as good as an old guy could do with open sights at 100 yards (under 3"). No leading. Anyone else have this problem?

[redneck1]

One thing I noticed years ago , guys who use wheel weights and other similar alloys for bpcr just stay quiet and do what they do , mostly because they get tired of hearing you can't use anything but lead and tin .......

Anyhoo , I gave up on ww for much the same reason as everyone else . I now go to the trap range at the club at the end of August or so when it's dry and the grass is thin and sweep up enough shot to suit my needs for the year , takes about 20 minutes .
And I then treat it exactly like wheel weights when casting

[todd9.3x57]

i used to own alot of COWW, but i shot it out of my rifles. i know a few garages that i could get WW, but with the zinc nowadays, i don't bother.

i have alot of old lead water services that i melted into ingots. i believe it is pure lead or close to it. i also have some Lyman #2 that i bought at local auctions. i have a lifetime supply of Roto-metal's pure tin ingots that i bought about 5 or 6 years ago. 12 -15bhn (10:1 or Lyman #2 with a skosh of tin) makes the deer go bye-bye.

[jdsingleshot]

There's a moronically easy way to tell if a weight is zinc. Just drop in on a concrete floor. If its zinc, it will ring. Lead makes almost no sound.

I got a 5 gallon bucket of WWs from a small tire shop. Since they were free, I'm content to sort them.

[Green Frog]

I don’t seek out lead sources anymore because truth to tell, I’ve got more lead than I’m ever likely to use at my age. If I were starting out today looking for a supply of lead alloy to work with, wheel weights would be low on my search list for the reasons mentioned above. I do have about 100-150 lb of ingots of old wheel weights gathered and rendered at least 25-30 years ago by my late father, so I trust them to be good old fashioned COWWs and am confident to use them accordingly.
My advice if you want wheel weights, look for an old fart who has been casting for decades and has decided to get rid of his supply because he won’t use it now.

Froggie

[atr]

I have lots of wheel weights left over from the 60's when I first got into casting. I don't have any problem with them. If I want to soften the mix I add some pure lead. sometimes I add some pewter.
atr

[Green Frog]

I have lots of wheel weights left over from the 60's when I first got into casting. I don't have any problem with them. If I want to soften the mix I add some pure lead. sometimes I add some pewter.
atr

On this line of thought IF you have what you know is old type COWWs, the mix still varies somewhat from year to year and batch to batch, but if I want to cast a bunch of revolver or pistol bullets for range and practice, I throw in a couple % tin and call it good. This has never failed to work well for that purpose. OTOH, when I want the best bullets possible for schuetzen, I avoid all WWs completely and mix my own alloy of pure lead and pure tin at 25:1 by weight. Of course for muzzle loaders and C&B revolvers it’s pure lead, period!

Bottom line, if you’re serious about it, and if you want to do more than one kind of shooting, you need a lead pantry with a variety of ingredients for the “dish” you are preparing... I even have some Monotype and Linotype on the shelf just in case I want some HARD bullets. :mrgreen:

Froggie

[BamaNapper]

Most of my lead comes from berm scrap now. But I have a shop near me that deals mostly with heavy equipment and trucks. Trucks tend to need larger weights than cars. Because of that, a good percentage of the weights he has in the bucket are lead alloy. If they need a 4oz weight, there's a good chance it'll be lead. I stop by from time to time and he's never charged me a dime for used weights. I sort them and test the stick-on types for hardness and most appear to be pure lead. While the alloy runs through my pistols just fine, the pure lead gets saved for the muzzleloader.

Check with some truck stops and see what they have. Local tire shops are probably a waste of time as they're all zinc and steel nowadays.

[beltfed]

If you want to sort the zinc out of COWW, simple method,
though time consuming
Use a razor type Utility knife.
take a WW,and try to shave a slice out of it. Kind of like a small scale whittling.
The lead weights will cut smoothly,
The Zinc ones, the knife will chatter, cut poorly.
most Zinc ones will be marked, but I do not trust that there are some that are not marked. so I use the knife on all the WW that are not
Of course, the Fe will not cut at all
beltfed/arnie

[Cast10]

I have come to depend upon WW’s. Local tire shop lets me get them for a modest price per 5gal bucket; Beer money for workers.

See lots of SOWW’s and my main mix is SOWW+Hardball. I came up with a mix for 11.3 BHN and fire it out of my 9’s and 10mm’s. No leading and they even expand a bit.

Sorting takes a bit, but for my needs, it’s time well spent. My last batch of scrap included lots of COWW’s, so that’s a plus. If you can find a BIG TRUCK shop, they’ll have some BIG WW’s!

[Texas by God]

I've used a bunch of COWW over the years but the supply is drying up. I mostly use berm scrap but I've fallen back on this wheelweight a few times.....it is close to WW.
They came from Granddads big old garden tiller. It was a monster.
My brothers and I used up the other weight when we were shooting bowling pins in the 80s.
This one just lays there, I'm not moving it unless I need a piece of it!https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20220808/e0039613ce74c0630bca88a423bef057.jpg

Sent from my SM-A716U using Tapatalk

[725]

Tell me I'm right or wrong here, but I fire up the pot and throw all the WW's in. those that float get tossed and the remaing liquid metal gets cast.

[alamogunr]

As long as the temp of the melt is below 788ºF(melt point of zinc) you should be good to go. In my experience, it is not easy to get that hot anyway. I cast at 725º because I like a little frost.

It would really be better if you did not do that in your casting pot. Too much trash in WW.

With your post count, why are you asking this question?

[BigEyeBob]

Tell me I'm right or wrong here, but I fire up the pot and throw all the WW's in. those that float get tossed and the remaing liquid metal gets cast.

Yep that's what I do ,smelter pot made out of a 9kg gas bottle ,bottom pour, Throw it all in, fire her her up and rake all the floaties off the top ,flux a few times stir and pour.

[26Charlie]

As regards hardness, they have changed over the years due to antimony content . Up until the 80s WW was harder than range scrap (.22s and .38 WC soft lead) then antimony got more expensive and range scrap started being harder bullets from 9mms etc. Our indoor range never permitted jacketed bullets lest the steel plates get damaged.

[HARRYMPOPE]

Tell me I'm right or wrong here, but I fire up the pot and throw all the WW's in. those that float get tossed and the remaing liquid metal gets cast.

yup same here.simple and it works .if it casts a decent bullet I'll melt it.i use lots of backstop bullets from outdoor ranges.
just not in my bottom pour pots.it seems to gunk up the spout.