New Load of WW, Zinc do you think?

[versifier]

I am just about at the end of my ancient stash of WW ingots, all from a friend's long defunct garage. Most of them were at minium 10yrs old, and they all looked the same, pretty much, except for the stickon strips. My eldest daughter got some new snow tires for her car yesterday at a small shop in town that normally does mostly transmissions. The bigger shops around here all have other casters with dibs on their supplies, so with nothing to lose, I asked what they do with their used wheel weights. "Pray for someone to come along and take 'em, but He ain't been answerin' lately." Do you want to get rid of some now? You'd think I just became part of the family. My daughter pipes up that I can't lift anything heavy and in about a minute, I had a trunk full. (Took me almost two hours to unload them with a small box and bucket, but no complaints!) Good pluck, but I normally wouldn't mention it, unless they blew up in the pot and the tinsel fairy came and decorated me & my shop again....

Now comes the reason for this Thread:
Along with the majority that look familiar to me, there are weights in with them that are plastic coated, and other ones that do not seem as dense as those of the older style. I have heard mentioned that lead-free weights are to be used in Europe, but really didn't give it much attention. Now I'm wishing that I had, but failing of that, I figured there'd be a lot of you here that weren't in left field at the time and were paying attention. Are they in use here yet? If so, is there an obvious way to tell the rejects apart (some marking on them, etc.) so I can remove them before I start smelting? I would discard anything that I had doubts about anyway, but wondered if I could downsize the discard pile with a little advice. As they say in Hawaii, "Talk story to me...."

[StarMetal]

Go here:

http://www.leadfreewheels.org/

Joe

[Finn45]

Find your magnet and knife and look here too:
http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?t=2268
Then use the magnet, the knife or set the temp low, or all those together and start sorting and melting. Leave the suspects to be added last in the last smaller melting batch or if there's only few just throw them away.

[nighthunter]

Perhaps the 1600 metric tons of WW are missing because good people like us know how to properly recycle them into other products. If there were this many WW laying along the roads and streets of Michigan I would take a shovel with me the next time I have to go there.
Nighthunter

[44man]

Those nuts think kids and animals go along the roads eating the weights. It is a proven fact that a chunk of lead laying on or in the ground poses no danger. They are making up those figures too. I have never lost a wheel weight from a wheel in my life and I don't know anyone else that has. From the sound of it, we have to get our wheels balanced twice a day because they are spraying weights at every revolution.

[44man]

Maybe we should hit the parking lots and get all we can before the nuts get their way!

[mike in co]

theres too many goodww's out there to worry about a bad one.
IF IN DOUBT, THROW IT OUT

why ruin a perfectly good batch of lead with one tin ww......

[NVcurmudgeon]

Driving my first car home from where I bought it, I threw a WW. Instant square wheel! In twelve years in the service station business I balanced many tires that had suddenly gone out of balance and had clean, WW shaped places on the wheels. When I lived in a city, I walked over 100 miles a month and picked up 10-20 lb. of WW, often at corners where there were stop lights.

[Blackwater]

All I know about zinc is that once, in over 35 years of casting, I melted a batch and when I stirred it, there was SOMETHING that looked like a rat running under a carpet in the mix just under the surface. That melt simply defied ALL efforts to cast a decent bullet. I adjusted temp up & down, got the mould hotter and cooler, and very simply, nothing worked - not even close. Most bullets had folds in them, and a few pits here & there, and 100% of the bullets I tried to cast were badly deformed. What a MESS!

As stated above, whenever I find a suspicious looking WW, it gets tossed into a "scrap" pile. I do NOT want to waste all that casting time ever again!

[versifier]

Thanks for the links, Joe & Finn. I'm really glad I asked before smelting. There are a bunch of the little zinc suckers in there, and now I know what to look for! :-)

[buck1]

Watch out for the ones that are rivited to the clips , trash em. ....Buck

[StanDahl]

Keep out any suspicious looking ww's, smelt at the lowest temperature possible, and watch carefully as they melt. Anything that floats or won't melt quickly enough gets tossed. I ran across a few in a few bucketfuls, and none melted at the temp I was smelting them with. Zinc will supposedly fizz if it meets acid. I've got some muriatic acid (HCl) I stole from my brother-in-law's pool house, but haven't tried it yet. Stan

[MN91311]

Muriatic acid will fizz and turn black when it comes into contact with zinc. I have done it.


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Zinc will supposedly fizz if it meets acid. I've got some muriatic acid (HCl) I stole from my brother-in-law's pool house, but haven't tried it yet. Stan[/QUOTE]

[floodgate]

MN91311:

Don't do that indoors. Zinc in Muriatic acid gives off hydrogen. Aluminum and lye do the same; I remember starting to degrease an action by heating it in lye solution in an aluminum pot on the stove. Watched an orange fireball (color of burning hydrogen) flare up and roll out through the skylight over the stove. I shut that down and dumped the pan into the sink REAL QUICK! (Sure cleaned the grease outa the sink trap!)

Remember the Hindenburg!

floodgate

[Ricochet]

Other thing about using muriatic acid indoors is that soon after using it, all of your iron and steel tools, etc. will acquire a nice browned finish.