Use for Zinc wheelweights

[Storydude]

I found one use for the nasties.....


Use as a Zinc anode for a Parkerizing solution.

I've seen many "witches brew" formulas on the net and all say to use "cut up pennies, electrical fittings and the like" to get a source of clean Zinc......Sounds like bubba at his finest.


I have a pile of clean Zinc sitting in a 5 gallon bucket.:mrgreen: I figure you scrape/burn/grind off the laquer/polymer/whatever coating they put on the Zinc WW's and drop into the phosporic acid to make Zinc phosphate.........

I think I"m going to whip up a batch today(I have the Lauer Zinc solution on order from Midway for the real project..) and see what happens........

[EMC45]

The zinc phosphate leaves a light to medium grey finish for parkerizing. The Manganese phosphate leaves a dark green/black finish.

[Ole]

The guys that make those mortar/cannonball setups like to use zinc to make their cannon balls.

[Cowboy5780]

Why not melt it down in another pot to clean all the coating off it ?

[Johnch]

I just take them to the scrap yard and sell them

Last time , can't remember the price
But it was more than they were selling lead for

Last batch of WW I got was close to 20% Zink

John

[SciFiJim]

We may all have to learn to use zinc eventually. If you have room you might store them against the day that lead wheel weights are no longer available.

[The Double D]

Keep watching this space, I may be looking for some more zinc and will trade my lead for your zinc.

[Storydude]

The zinc phosphate leaves a light to medium grey finish for parkerizing. The Manganese phosphate leaves a dark green/black finish.

That's perfect, as that's the color I"m looking for..;)

I may have stumbled on the secret to making "green" park too. Heard use of "Old diesel oil, bag balm, bore butter, vasoline....) Looking at lots of solutions for it(that green color) I've found a common material......




Sulphur.

:mrgreen:

Higher sulphur content seems to be the common denominator.

[hunter64]

I have an older Rifleman magazine somewhere where they used zinc for the bullets. They said that you have to have a separate cast iron pot, ladle etc as to not contaminate your regular stuff. Can't remember exactly what it said but basically the BHN number was right up there to almost copper properties and the weight was about 20-25% less than Lyman #2. So if you had a mold that made a 200gn bullet, in Zinc it would come out at about 150-160gn. You really had to get the melt hot and it was hard to get good fill out because of it.

[troy_mclure]

i may have a source of zinc, i may be able to snag a few anodes for pipelines. they are pretty big.

[wildwes]

I have the old NRA Illustrated Reloading Manual from the 60's, and it has an article on casting "Zamak" bullets, which is just another name for Zinc Die Castings, AKA pot metal. I'll have to look it up, but I think they were fairly successful, the bullets were just a lot lighter than lead, like hunter64 said.

[The Double D]

Zamak is a Brand and type of Zinc Alloy http://www.eazall.com/diecastalloys.aspx

[wildwes]

I never knew that Zamak was a brand, I just remember seeing the name in the article. I haven't opened that book since last year, grandaddy gave it to me, it was his first reloading manual, I read it cover to cover. I just remembered seeing that article. It was fairly interesting to read.