BattleRife
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
- Location
- of No Fixed Address
There is an auto repair shop 2 doors down from my office just off Argyll Road in Edmonton, they do a little a tire work as part of their services. When I first encountered them they didn’t have a solid plan for their wheel weights, there had been a guy picking them up sporadically but he wasn’t reliable, so the manager said I could have them if I made sure they were always left with a bucket to throw them into. No problem.
I like to work with the half size poly pails, usually 10-12 litre size, as they are about as big as they can be and still manageable to lift and move by hand when full. I get them from supermarket bakeries, as pie filling, cake icing and garlic butter are commonly packed in these pails. I pick up the weights twice a year, after the winter tires go on and come off. Usually I get a half pail or even less, but the shop must have had a banner spring, because when I went into the shop last week the pail was nearly full. I took them a half dozen doughnuts and a 20 pack of Timbits in appreciation for the haul:
Today I hand sorted the weights, and thought I would share the results:
Clip on weights that appear to be lead alloy: 23.8kg
Stick on weights that appear to be soft lead: 5.8kg
Weights that appear to be non-lead: 9.0kg
There is a lot of current worry about the loss of wheel weights as an economical source of lead for our bullets, but that’s a decent bucket full and it is still three-quarters lead based.
As I have found previously, the vast majority of the non-toxic weights are iron based, and they are usually visually distinctive, so that once you know what you’re looking for, they are pretty easy to weed out without having to check each one with pliers or a magnet. It helps that most of the various types are clearly marked “Fe”.
What was a new development to me was the appearance of significant numbers of zinc weights. As much as I’ve seen people lament over these for years, I’ve never seen more than a half dozen in a bucket before, and considered them something of a novelty. But this bucket had lots of them. Fortunately, as with the iron weights they were easy to spot as being a little different shape, and clearly marked as zinc:
I like to work with the half size poly pails, usually 10-12 litre size, as they are about as big as they can be and still manageable to lift and move by hand when full. I get them from supermarket bakeries, as pie filling, cake icing and garlic butter are commonly packed in these pails. I pick up the weights twice a year, after the winter tires go on and come off. Usually I get a half pail or even less, but the shop must have had a banner spring, because when I went into the shop last week the pail was nearly full. I took them a half dozen doughnuts and a 20 pack of Timbits in appreciation for the haul:
Today I hand sorted the weights, and thought I would share the results:
Clip on weights that appear to be lead alloy: 23.8kg
Stick on weights that appear to be soft lead: 5.8kg
Weights that appear to be non-lead: 9.0kg
There is a lot of current worry about the loss of wheel weights as an economical source of lead for our bullets, but that’s a decent bucket full and it is still three-quarters lead based.
As I have found previously, the vast majority of the non-toxic weights are iron based, and they are usually visually distinctive, so that once you know what you’re looking for, they are pretty easy to weed out without having to check each one with pliers or a magnet. It helps that most of the various types are clearly marked “Fe”.
What was a new development to me was the appearance of significant numbers of zinc weights. As much as I’ve seen people lament over these for years, I’ve never seen more than a half dozen in a bucket before, and considered them something of a novelty. But this bucket had lots of them. Fortunately, as with the iron weights they were easy to spot as being a little different shape, and clearly marked as zinc:
