I looked into getting lead for casting my own stuff a while back. Even have a good friend with a tire shop but he doesn't deal in lead weights, and hasn't for years. So very few come in. I did find a local place to buy ingots of lead though, $1.20 a lb and you can pick the grade you want. Maybe not the cheapest, but sure isn't that expensive and is the easiest to get. I use 3 50lb blocks painted with a plastic paint for weight in the back of the woman's CTS. Takes up no space compared to sand bags. I traded a little electrical work for those ones though.
Wheel weights
- Thread starter reomack
- Start date
New Camper
CGN frequent flyer
- Location
- Lurking in the woods near SFRC.
I was suspicious of that, and things do tend to become more volatile when heated. Resolved my question whether batteries could be a viable source of lead if I did decide to start casting.
Think of those weights in a front end collision and what they will do to her. 50lb weights will still be doing 100k after the vehicle stops.
They aren't going anywhere in a collision. Certainly not any farther than a sand bag. They aren't on the dash or in the cabin.
That and I was already worried about that so tethered them to the unibody in the back. For the kid though, not her, lol.
They stayed in the back of a crashed cherokee that was a 50/50 head on that ended in a roll over back onto it's wheels. Only left dents in the back of the rear seat.
Well stop wasting the lead on pointless down riggers!!! You only need a couple.. Seriously though what's the deal with casting your own, do you go through that many that it makes it worth it?
I sell them to the sporting good stores. For 2.25 a pound. Last year i made 2000 dollars selling my balls!! The best part is that the wife cant complain aboit me buy guns or reloading stuff
Batteries aren't a good source of lead because most of the lead is in the form of lead oxide, lead dioxide and lead sulfate. The most lead you will get out is a couple pounds from the battery posts, bus bars and some from the grids.
To get most of the remaining lead, there are two methods, blast furnace (not just heat, because the sulfate need to be reduced, so the furnace needs coke or fuel for the carbon to react with the oxides to convert the lead oxides to lead, plus excess air supply to burn off/reduce the oxides and carbon), or electrolysis. Both methods it needs to be ground up with the remaining paste. One into the blast furnace the other way into concentrated sodium hydroxide solution and the lead removed by electrolysis. Also, with a blast furnace, if the fumes aren't captured and treated, you will contaminate your property, and everything for miles downwind.
You then have lead, but also a huge amount of everything that remains behind, goo, or slag. An industrial process further separates and treats the mess, and recycles most of it. But in your backyard? Not so much......
Spot lead market prices are now around 90 - 95 cents a pound. So might be able to get some for a reasonable cost from a large supplier.
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What advantages /disadvantages are there to using pure lead,the old lead/mix wheel weights or the new zinc steel wheel weights are there?
Are the new zinc/steel wheel weights too hard to use in rifle barrels?Is pure lead to soft and therefore it will lead up rifle barrels?
Are the new zinc/steel wheel weights too hard to use in rifle barrels?Is pure lead to soft and therefore it will lead up rifle barrels?
The operating pressure of a firearm determines what hardness of alloy may prove optimum for accuracy.
An antique revolver operating at 10,000 psi wants soft bullets in order to obturate(expand under firing pressure to seal the chamber throat and bore).
A rifle cartridge, on the other hand, may produce upwards of 50,000 psi. It needs a harder alloy to shoot well at those high speeds and pressures.
The range of common casting alloys falls somewhere between pure soft lead and very hard linotype metal. Many shooters go to great lengths experimenting to determine what hardness will give best results.
To my knowlege, no one uses zink or steel to make bullets. In fact, if any zink does get melted in to ones lead, that batch is ruined. Even a trace of zink will prevent the molten metal from filling out the sharp grooves in the mold blocks.
Yes!, stick-on's are "golden" lead. They are very soft. The 750lbs lot of WW's yielded me 40lbs of stick-ons. They made beautifull, accurate .44 and .45 slugs for the old revolvers.
It might not be clear to you that there are broadly four types of wheelweights:
- pure lead stick-on;
- lead alloy attached to a steel clip;
- zinc attached to a steel clip; and
- steel attached to a steel clip.
When you "smelt" wheelweights (a term that has become vernacular in the bullet casting community meaning to melt it to separate the steel from the other metal, and a term which the prissy types hate), the steel will float to the top and be set aside.
I save any Zinc wheelweights and melt them down for fun (and possible future sale). You've got to really crank the heat to get them to melt, and using them in a mold to make bullets is a chore as well. Once cast, they're much lighter than lead, harder and most crucially, brittle. Not a great combination for a bullet.
Steel on the other hand - really? There are steel jacketed bullets, but a solid steel bullet would operate like a bore obstruction, so I'll not elaborate. Even if it would work, do you have a forge in which to melt it? How do you propose to mold it - in a mold with a lower melting temperature than the molten steel, or a steel one so that the mold would become one with the molten steel?
Thanks for the replies.All I ever did was melt lead or wheel weights in an old tin can with a blow touch. I held the can with vice grips on a slit I cut from the side of the can.I fashioned a V on one side of the can to pour the material into the mould.I guess if everything melts that way the wheel weights must be the old style ones?
When I used cast lead bullets it is for some of the older Winchester rifles,like the .45-70.They are not loaded to high velocity.Many times I load the cartridges using my old Winchester Model 1894 reloading tools and Winchester Type 5 moulds.Kind of fun to do things the way the old timers would have done it in the back country.Well most of how they would have done it.I am sure they did not have a blow touch,but most likely melted the lead in a can on the stove.
When I used cast lead bullets it is for some of the older Winchester rifles,like the .45-70.They are not loaded to high velocity.Many times I load the cartridges using my old Winchester Model 1894 reloading tools and Winchester Type 5 moulds.Kind of fun to do things the way the old timers would have done it in the back country.Well most of how they would have done it.I am sure they did not have a blow touch,but most likely melted the lead in a can on the stove.
Zinc will have Zn on them, steel will have Fe on them, most of the time...that has been my experience anyway.
I bought a bunch of really cheap sinkers and other kinds of fish weights fo a really good price thinking I could cast them instead. Turned out they were all steel and not a drop of lead in the bunch.I have a bunch of old time yard lights and the wireing for them has lead sheathing over the wires for some reason.
New Camper
CGN frequent flyer
- Location
- Lurking in the woods near SFRC.
Thank you for that description: Resolves the logistical queries around that source.
mike44325 said:
I wouldn't even sell my appendix for $2000.00 let alone two things of greater importance.
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