Wheel weights - for all you chicken littles

I pick up a few zinc ww and lots of zinc anodes that they use on the fishing boats in my area and melt them into bars for future sale when the price gets up a bit. it has not taken that much time to pick up 100 lbs of zinc in my area.
 
I asked a few local tire shops that already had lead collectors to save me the stick on weights, for black powder bullet casting. One guy was nice enough to put aside a full bucket- about 25 pounds- almost all steel, only got about 2 ounces of lead! Another shop I do much better, apparently the guy running the balancing machine has a lot of wastage with the stick-ons, and they still use the soft lead stuff- I'm getting about 30-40% , much of it new looking and clean, some with the double-sided tape still intact. I keep them supplied with coffee money and get more than enough for my needs.Everybody's happy.
 
I had a flat tire fixed at Kal-Tire on Friday and I asked if they had any WW's. It was a new guy behind the counter and he said I think there is a bucket out back. I pulled the truck around and he said I could have a 3/4 full bucket no charge.

I finished yesterday afternoon sorting and melting down what little that was usable. The majority was steel weights and zinc and other garbage. I weighed the bucket first and it was 64 pounds. I harvested 8 lbs. of stick on's, 9 lbs. of COWW and that was it. They were free so I cant complain but a lot of work for that little bit of reward compared to 20 years ago when all you had to deal with was lug nuts and cigarette butts.

I have better return for my effort on tire shops that mostly do large trucks, some of those big WW sure add up quickly.
 
Loyalist said:
I think he is inferring the opposite: that a lot of people complain that there is too much zinc in wheel weight scores these days and that it makes lead scavenging harder. By the chicken little title, I think he is saying that there is still lots of WW lead out there so don't worry, the sky isn't falling.
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The latest buckets of wheel weights I obtained have less than 20% lead. The majority are steel, there are some zine.
Even the stick on wheel weights are steel.
The local tire shop now chucks all wheel weights in the garbage - or so they tell me.
 
I have a bar about 5lbs, 1/2" × 1" × 12" or so in size, stamped 60/40 on side, any idea what that would be? I did about 600 lbs into bars, but didn't add that in not knowing what it was.
 
The worst hauls here are better than my results. I asked 5 shops for ww and 5shops said we have a scrapper that picks them up. We cant sell you anything. I said I could make a better offer, they all said not interested. :(

Luckily my range said I could sift for range scrap as long as I dont muck up the berms.
 
yomomma said:
I must be sitting in a honey hole then. The only time I got less then 50% lead was when someone sold me two buckets full of WW and water.
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I think you must just have worked to find the best places to get them. Some places are still putting lead weights on I have all lead weights on my car.
 
I haven't got wheelweights for a couple years but the last pail I got locally ws 40% iron and zinc. Still not bad at $20 for a 90 lb pail.
 
Maybe I'm just in a lead rich/zinc poor environment.
35lb COWW
9lb steal/junk
4lbs SOWW
2lbs zinc

Just under 80% lead paid $0.30/lb....so once cleaned up $0.40-.45/lb or less than 1/3 the cost buying new.
 
I'm guessing that I have 1,000 lbs of 1 lbs ingots sitting under my deck. It havent melted wheel weights for likely a good 15 years.

Just wondering what the concern is with zinc? Is there a way to tell if I have some zinc in my ingots? What would it to to boolits or shot? I have made both using it but to be honest have not cast much of anything for a long time except 12 gauge slugs this past year.

Didn't really have access to the internet in those days so just melted what I picked up from Tire shops wherever I could.
 
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