zinc wheel weights

[buggybuilder]

What do most bullet casters do with their zinc wheel weights?

[BK7saum]

Just set them aside. At one time there was a user on here that would trade pound for pound lead for zinc, but either he isn't on here or no longer needs zinc.

I think he or others used zinc for casting cannonballs.

[SoonerEd]

I just save mine till I figure out what to do with them.

[Dusty Bannister]

Dive weights or large trot line weights.

[gwpercle]

One day someone will come up with a good use for the zinker's ...
And when they do I wont have to buy any ... Toss them in a bucket ... For Future Use !
Some states are/have banned lead shotshell projectiles , lead boolits even fishing sinkers .
With all the zinkers out there a mould that can be used with zinc to cast buckshot and boolits and even fishing sinkers would be a nice thing to have ... it's time will come .
Gary

[Iron369]

Some people cast boolits with them.

[Doughty]

I heard down at the shoe shine stand that in the next pandemic that there will be a shortage of them, so I store all of mine in the shed with my TP.

[Don1357]

you make anodes with them. Outboard boat motors, crab pots, basically anything made of metal that gets submerged, specially in salt water, can use an anode. When the anode is connected to the submerged metal the galvanic corrosion is directed to the sacrificial anode. As you can imagine by now this anode is made out of zinc.

[mdntranger50]

Look up videos of Elvis Ammo using zinc to cast bullets. He burnt out one of his pots melting it down.

[metricmonkeywrench]

Im with BK7, i thought there was a couple folks making cannonballs and something like 37mm rounds with zinc

The first time I had a large enough pile I sold it to a scrapyard who just took it as dirty lead for a few bucks, the next batch went into the scrap metal bin at the landfill.

[heebs]

I save mine till I get a 5 gal pail. then sell to the recycler or trade him for lead.

[JonB_in_Glencoe]

For clarification, American made zinc WW's are cast using a alloy[not pure Zinc], most often it's ZAMAK 3

[Winger Ed.]

They are in the future of casting as Lead dries up and/or gets banned.
There's some youtube videos of folks already casting with them.
From the same Iron mold, they weigh about 60% what Lead does, and you can push them up to jacketed speeds.

[lightman]

I save mine till I get a 5 gal pail. then sell to the recycler or trade him for lead.

This is what I do. Along with any steel weights and scrap brass.

[justindad]

This is what I do. Along with any steel weights and scrap brass.

How much do you get for your steel and zinc? The closest scrapper to me pays $0.07 per pound of scrap steel.

[405grain]

Industrial die casting is a pretty common process. I'm actually amazed that some factory isn't making zinc bullets for sale. It wouldn't be very hard to produce 45 round nose and 9mm zinc bullets by the millions. They wouldn't need lube, gas checks, jackets or coatings. In fact, I'm even more surprised that ammunition suppliers that make cartridges with aluminum cases aren't using zinc bullets. If there were some galvanic issues involved the bullets could be powder or polymer coated. For us bullet casters zinc bullets might be a pain, but from an industrial standpoint they would be cheap and easy to produce in vast quantities, be "environmentally friendly", have a good chance of getting some market share among budget ammunition, get higher velocity than conventional ammo (a marketing perk), etc. If I were an ammunition company I'd market something like this.

[Rickf1985]

Who is going to publish the load data for those millions of bullets? That might be one of the issues. someone has to pay for all that testing.

[Rapier]

I cast 8 oz egg weights out of my messed up alloy from adding "tin" the dealer swore it was tin, clabbered 100#s of my alloy, So I made egg weights for fishing in the gulf, still have some left for bluegill fishing in the lake.....hum. Boat is sold, dock is sold, happy days.

[lightman]

How much do you get for your steel and zinc? The closest scrapper to me pays $0.07 per pound of scrap steel.

I don't really remember. I haven't sold anything in more than a year. Seems like 10cents a pound for wheelweights and $2 a pound for scrap brass.

[CastingFool]

2 or 3 yrs ago, I had something like 480 lbs of scrap steel, and all I got was $7. Hardly worth a trip to the scrap yard.