First smelting session.

[Hafast]

I smelted 120 pounds of backstop salvaged bullets and 300 pounds of wheel weights yesterday. My poor old body is protesting in places I didn't even know were places. I was surprised to learn that the salvaged bullets took a lot more fluxing than the wheel weights. In fact after the first two pots of wheel weights I quit adding flux. As inexpensive as wheel weights are I don't think I'm going to fool with salvaging the bullets any longer.

[sqlbullet]

I don't have experience with wheel weights per se, as most of my lead is radiation shielding. However, it seems to me that quite a bit of the material attached to them would be carbon based, making them somewhat self-fluxing.

Yet another positive benefit of using wheel weights.

[imashooter2]

My experience as well. Range scrap takes more time and gas to smelt than WW and there is a lot more waste. That said, range scrap is all I've beeen able to aquire for free or nearly free for a few years now. I never say no.

[Gunslinger]

I get range lead for free, I can dig out 150lbs in 3 hours! And I like smelting, so I'll keep digging for it.

Imashooter2:

Do you use it as is or do you mix it with something?

[imashooter2]

Every bucket is different, but I estimate the stuff I get as 25% commercial cast, 25% jacketed and 50% .22s over time. It casts beautifully as is, air cools soft, but harder than pure and water quenches about the same as ACWW to my scientific scratch tests.

I try to level out the inconsistency by turning a couple buckets at a time into a wheelbarrow to load the pot, smelting 6 or so buckets in a session and then jumbling the ingots before storage.