have begun smelting my own lead

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Dropped by a Canadian Tire in Montreal and flat out asked the Automotive Dept. manager if I could buy a large bucket of used WWs. At first he balked, then took me into his office and accepted a $20 bill. The bucket weighed in at 160.4 pounds.

I have smelted a little less than 1/2 the bucket, and have ended up with approx. 33 pounds of ingot. So if I extrapolate, 160 lbs of WW should give me about 70 lbs. of ingot give or take. This would be good for 2450 200gr. bullets, not too shabby for $20.

I have read that by Jan 1 , 2011 in the US, all lead WWs will be banned. However, as of this year, many WW manufacturers have already been switching to zinc in advance of the ban. I can say that at least 5 % - 7 % of the bucket was zinc. Zinc WWs are the ones that don't melt, and are often painted grey.

I would say accumulate as many wheel weights as you can find, because in a couple of years we will all have to pay for our alloy. This lead me to another discovery. We have all seen at what price large gun dealers sell bullet grade lead ingots.

There is a large scrap dealer in my city that smelts WW lead into 40 pound ingots, however, they only deal in 500 pound minimum orders. At 500 pounds, they are asking $1.43 lb. Their lead is 96% lead, 4% antimony, and trace amount of tin, basically the standard WW alloy.

If I have enough interest locally, I would be inclined to pool an order.
 
tjsudbury said:
Technically, your not smelting it
That would involve refining it directly from a concentrate from the mine
What your doing is remelting it
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Seriously? Are you an English Teacher or perhaps a Metallurgist with too much time on your hands? The guy makes a post on his first experience in bullet (dare I say "boolit") casting and all you can do is try to correct him?

In the world of bullet casting, what he is doing is known as "smelting" in the vernacular. He's not "re-melting" as he is separating the lead alloys from steel, paint, and other various items that would be in the bucket - a process that would be more correct to call smelting than re-melting.

As for the posters comments:

- yes, grab it while you can;
- I typically find about 2% zinc and 2-3% steel (what you describe as zinc could be steel). Don't discard the zinc, divide it from the steel (using a magnet as zinc is not attracted by a magnet), melt it down and make ingots. It goes from about $7/lb these days;
- I think that a few states are moving away from lead, but I suspect that we'll have lead-based wheelweights in use for a few years yet; and
- $1.43/lb is not a bad price (but I have a stash).
 
Andy said:
- $1.43/lb is not a bad price (but I have a stash).
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$0.80 a pound must be pretty good then, from a distributor? I am looking into casting my own pure lead bullets for my blackpowder antiques. I work with a guy who used to work with lead for a number of years who has connections in the business. I asked him if he could check around and see what kind of price he could get for pure lead. He ballparked $0.80/lb, but that wasn't definate.

The more I read about casting the more interesting and fun it sounds. :cool:
 
Andy...thank you for saying what I was thinking. Piccolig, congrats on coming over to the dark side with us. Casting is a fun hobby all on it's own. Grab every wheel weight you can. The last batch I did last fall had about 50 percent usable lead in it. The rest was iron, zinc, PLASTIC...yes, they're starting to use plastic clip on weights now. Get your lead while you can. Once my garage is cleaned out, I'm going to top up my lifetime supply.


As for pure lead, go by your local scrap dealer and look for old roof sheeting. It's soft enough for your black powder stuff. The last time I bought some was last fall and got it for 50 cents a pound. You've got to melt it down and pour your own ingots though. If you're just interested in smaller quantities, you might be better to find it for 80 cents per pound in a form that you can just drop into a pot and cast with.
 
- I typically find about 2% zinc and 2-3% steel (what you describe as zinc could be steel). Don't discard the zinc, divide it from the steel (using a magnet as zinc is not attracted by a magnet), melt it down and make ingots. It goes from about $7/lb these days;
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Andy , thanks for the tip.
 
Just to add a few tips to what has already been said.

Always separate what you are melting from that big bucket of lovely wheel weights.

You will have zinc,metal and plastic weights in there and what hasn't been mentioned is the small stick on square weights with amount of weight stamped on the front, they are as close to pure lead as you can get without buying from a foundry.

So melt all the wheel weights by themselves and carefully watch for floaters on top of the melt that I might have missed, they are zinc or metal weights.

As far as zinc is concerned, do not and I mean do not use the same pot to melt any zinc weights in that you use to melt lead in. It doesn't take much zinc to contaminate lead.

What happens is if the lead is contaminated with zinc, even small traces of it, when you try to cast bullets with it, the bullets will not cast. The lead will not fill out the shape of the bullet in the mold and you will literally want to beat your head against the wall trying to figure out why you cant get one good bullet. Trust me, been there done that.

A method to remove zinc contamination is this and it has worked for me.
-Outdoors away from neighbors and on a day that has at least a slight wind.
-bring the contaminated lead mixture up to a really high temperature, at least 800F or about 420c.
-get your mask on and your protective clothing on and a long wooden stick to stir the mixture and you will need a large metal spoon (dollar store).
-for a pot about one gallon size add about 2 tablespoons or sulfur, sprinkle it on the top of the melt and stir like the dickens.
-now make sure you are up wind and that the wind direction is not going anywhere near your neighbors as this is going to stick like rotten eggs and some old grandmother is going to think there is a natural gas leak and you will have the fire dept. there quicker than you can shake a stick at.
- once it has been stirred around and mixed well there will be a lot of crap on top of the melt, skim this off and discard.
-do it another time with sulfur and you should be good to go.

Very messy and stinky and to be avoided at all costs.

Average yield of good usable WW's is about 70-75% of the weight and that number is slowly going down as the lead ban is coming into effect in the US and has been banned in Europe for a number of years.

Hit the big tire shops that change truck tires, they are always more productive for big ww's.

If you need more pure lead (stick on kind), hit the import (rice burner) mod shops, all those goofy aluminum wheels need stick on's to balance. You will also find allot of zinc weights in there if the car came from overseas. Melt all the stick on's by themselves and if you don't have a black powder gun then you can trade this pure lead for more WW's, usually two to one or as high as three to one depending on how much the other needs lead.

Have to run to work but you can always jump over to cast boolits web site and there is more than enough stuff to read to get you started.
 
A timely discussion - I'm conducting a free smelting demo at EOHC (east of Ottawa) this Saturday from 1:00-4:00.

As for zinc (the great Satan, or Bogeyman if you will of casting), I have smelted over two tons of raw wheelweight in the past five years and have zero instances of contamination to report. You have to be extremely careless to contaminate your melt with zinc, because it is much lighter than lead (and floats along with the steel and misc garbage) and more importantly, its melting temperature is much higher than lead (~780F vs ~624F). I no longer spend time trying to sort them out before they hit the pot, because you will miss some, therefore you need to do what I will describe anyways, so why waste time picking? I do sort as it goes into the pot separating stick-ons and any wheelweight that is obviously zinc or steel (as well as garbage), but no longer do I treat it as a separate step (not that there's anything wrong with that!) The raw wheelweight all goes into the pot, and the instant the mass turns from a "slurry" to molten, I skim. If you follow this process and pay attention, no zinc will be melted. I once tried to melt some zinc just to see how much time I would have, and it took 15 minutes on high after the melt had gone molten before the zinc started to break down - by then the lead was glowing a pale red.

I don't flux at this stage - I find that the oils, greases and other assorted carbon-based trash serve well as a flux.

There are a lot of opinions and emotion over zinc, and people take how they handle it very personally, so you will need to decide which approach is for you.
 
Andy said:
Seriously? Are you an English Teacher or perhaps a Metallurgist with too much time on your hands? The guy makes a post on his first experience in bullet (dare I say "boolit") casting and all you can do is try to correct him?

In the world of bullet casting, what he is doing is known as "smelting" in the vernacular. He's not "re-melting" as he is separating the lead alloys from steel, paint, and other various items that would be in the bucket - a process that would be more correct to call smelting than re-melting.
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Andy,

Truly no offense intended but smelting is a real word that has a very specific definition. Just because a bunch of guys use it incorrectly when melting down a bunch of wheel weights doesn't make it right.

Besides, the word 'smelting' has all kinds of bad connotations that I wouldn't want the uninformed public to be hearing in conjunction with any activities taking place in my driveway.

Lots of people use the word 'bullet' when refering to a cartridge, people call bullets 'Leads' and 'Heads'. People talk about muzzle 'breaks' when they really mean 'brakes'....none of this is ok IMO.

Melting down wheelweights and separating the junk is not smelting, its...well...melting down wheelweights and separating the junk.

As for the original post, I'm sure he didn't need to be jumped on as he is likely just repeating the incorrect term he heard from others, but I'm sure the correction was made because it bugs that guy as much as it bugs me. I like to think we're smarter than this. What happened to literacy?
 
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piccolig welcome to the world of boolit casting and smelting WW. I shoot cast exclusivbely in all my pistols and rifles including my SKS and M 14. No lead bullets do not hurt the gas systems on semi-auto rifles.

Join the Cast Bullet Forum : http://castboolits.gunloads.com/

Guys there have been casting for decades and are always ready to help you along.

When smelting your WW skim all the crud off (I use an old slotted table spoon) and flux often. I use candle wax and stir vigorously to remove the impurities. I pour my lead into muffin pans for use later in my melter.

A good book to have on hand is the "Cast Bullet Handbook" by Lyman. This book contans a wealth of information for new casters and is a must have.

Good luck in your delivery of the silver stream.

Take Care

Bob
 
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TwoTone said:
Andy,

Truly no offense intended but smelting is a real word that has a very specific definition. Just because a bunch of guys use it incorrectly when melting down a bunch of wheel weights doesn't make it right.

Besides, the word 'smelting' has all kinds of bad connotations that I wouldn't want the uninformed public to be hearing in conjunction with any activities taking place in my driveway.

Lots of people use the word 'bullet' when refering to a cartridge, people call bullets 'Leads' and 'Heads'. People talk about muzzle 'breaks' when they really mean 'brakes'....none of this is ok IMO.

Melting down wheelweights and seperating the junk is not smelting, its...well...melting down wheelweights and seperating the junk.

As for the original post, I'm sure he didn't need to be jumped on as he is likely just repeating the incorrect term he heard from others, but I'm sure the correction was made because it bugs that guy as much as it bugs me. I like to think we're smarter than this. What happened to literacy?
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I'm all for good spelling and precise use of language. BTW - you have a bunch of spelling errors.

Anyways, as you well know, language evolves. In the bullet casting community, the word "smelting" has come to be understood as meaning something different from your accepted definition.

If you ever wander over to "Cast Boolits" http://castboolits.gunloads.com/ you'll get a well-earned rough ride if you try to correct or complain about: spelling; grammar; the accepted meaning of "smelting" in the context of bullet casting; and the use of the word "boolits".
 
haha I'm writing: "Call junk yard for wheel weights" on my weekend ToDo list. It's going right under: "Figure out why ford ranger keeps breaking"
 
I agree, in bullet casting circles, the initial melt of your diff. alloys into usable sized pieces, ready for your pot and casting is known as "smelting", this would include wheel weights being melted and cleaned.
I don't know if anyone touched on the danger of any water, even moisture getting into your melt, don't add anything with moisture to an already melted liquid, or you will be visited by the tinsel fairy and it's not fun!!!
 
ben hunchak said:
I agree, in bullet casting circles, the initial melt of your diff. alloys into usable sized pieces, ready for your pot and casting is known as "smelting", this would include wheel weights being melted and cleaned.
I don't know if anyone touched on the danger of any water, even moisture getting into your melt, don't add anything with moisture to an already melted liquid, or you will be visited by the tinsel fairy and it's not fun!!!
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But I thought the tinsel fairy was full of games and giggles. Maybe your tinsel fairy was really the vegetable fairy, and wouldn't leave until you finished your parsnips :(
 
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