Observations and musings about wheel weights.

First I’m new at using wheel weights for bullets. I have been using pure lead for round balls and Minies for 20 years. Started casting my own .58’s at something like 12. And then started using 20:1 lead: tin for .45-70 405HB’s. I always had known alloys to start with and my bullets almost always came out great.

I have always purchased my hard alloy bullets for my center fire pistols and rifles. The prices were always reasonable and quality was great for run of the mill calibers.
Then I started to play with big slugs, 420-grain .45-70 and oddball dia. slugs like .382 for a .38-55 and either the prices were too high or the size unobtainable.
So I started to play with wheel weights and wouldn’t you know it I killed my first batch of alloy with a zinc weight (or two). I also have some other theories, as yet untested, about what went wrong with my first foray into using wheel weights for cast bullets. After fighting with poor mold fill and bullet weights that varied by as much as 10 grains, I figured out part of the problem, Zinc. But I think there are other metals too that are in wheel weights that doomed my first attempt. I took all my pre-cast ingots, about 100 pounds and tossed them in the bottom of the cabinet my bench grinder is on. At least they can do one thing right, deaden vibration in my grinding bench.

I’m getting ready to start casting again and have decided to sort my wheel weights by ductility and fracture characteristics. Maybe I’m wasting my time, but here’s what I’ve started doing. Any wheel weight that says MICRO or has a single M, P or T goes in the “good†bucket. Everything else goes in the “unknown†bucket; if it’s too small to have a code I toss them too. I have a very unscientific test that I use to determine this. I took longish (2 ½†to 3â€) wheel weights of all the various letter codes I could find in my buckets, clamped one end in my bench vice and then tried to bend them 90 degrees. MICRO’s will bend 90 or beyond and might tear just a little across the outside of the bend. Good ductility, and fairly soft. The M’s act the same.
The P’s and T’s will bend 90, tear about 30% through the thickness with obvious tensile stretching and the grain structure inside is nice and tight with no voids or bubbles. Good toughness and good ductility.

The other letter codes like AL-MC, MC and others I can’t recall just now bend about 10-20 degrees and then they snap off like a piece of cast pot metal with no signs of tensile stretching. These have big voids with discolored (reddish brown) surfaces inside the bubbles and varying grain structure; small grains mixed with blobs and large grains. I have no idea how hard these are, perhaps if I cast samples from the “Good†types and heat-treat them they will act the same. But I doubt it. The clue is the voids. What is in the alloy that is out-gassing at pour? I have no idea; maybe they have high Zinc content, or Cadmium from recycled batteries, or some percentage of Aluminum. The Lyman book lists how these metals affect the bullet alloy and the descriptions pretty much match what I’m seeing.

The next step is to make a mold and cast some test samples of my sorted “Good†and “Unknown†and see if after melting and pouring the physical characteristics change.

Have any of the fellows with more experience with WW casting done anything like this?
Has this experiment been done and documented before?

Any and all constructive feedback is welcome. I just want to make the best bullets I can.

Rusty, pard;

"My" tire shops, the sources of my wheelweights, are on a very busy Interstate, and hence can be expected to process weights from all over the place, including new vehicles, old ones, trucks, European vehicles...you name it.

I have NEVER had a bad "batch" of ww alloy from these shops.

The only precaution necessary to weed out the dreaded zinc weight (of which I have seen NONE in several tons of used ww) is to get the bulk of the weights melted, and as soon as the contents of the pot are largely liquid, scoop out everything that hasn't melted. Zinc melts at a much higher temperature than lead alloys do, and the zinc weights, IF there are any, will be removed along with the steel clips and other debris.

One day I brought a bucket of used weights home, spread them on the tailgate of my truck, and sorted out EVERYTHING that looked "different". This included shiny weights, painted weights, plastic-coated weights, odd-shaped weights, and anything that didn't seem to be like the vast majority of the weights in the bucket. I ended up with about 20 pounds of "rejects" out of a 130-pound bucket.

By way of an experiment, I then melted, cleaned and fluxed all the "rejects" and cast some bullets from the melt....without any difficulty whatever. Hmmm.

Melting a batch of the "good" ww from the same bucket, I cast another group of bullets with the same mould.

Comparing the bullets from the two batches, "reject" and "good", I found that all the bullets were well within normal tolerances....the weight spread was very small for both batches, and average weight was the same for a 20-bullet sample of each; the measurements were identical; and the "reject-metal" bullets were every bit as good as those from the "good" batch.

From that day onward, at least three years now, all I sort out is the assorted junk, except that I separate the stick-on weights for use as pure lead. I have had no problems using this method. I keep my 3-pound ingots in .50-caliber ammo cans, which hold about 100 pounds of lead. I fill the cans as I make the ingots, so if a problem ever did arise, just isolating the particular can in use should fix the difficulty.

It's really pretty simple. If you want to really get into the scientific stuff as you describe, there's surely no harm in it. I'd rather spend the time making bullets or shooting them, though!

My bullets normally have an extreme spread in weight of less than two grains for 250 grain designs, and less than one grain in 150s or lighter. I even have an RCBS 416-350 single-cavity mould which typically throws WW bullets with a MAXIMUM weight spread of under one grain for 365-grain bullets, even in large samples (over 100 bullets), and that is very nice to see, indeed.

One important thing in my WW casting is that I run the RCBS furnace at absolute maximum temperature, about 870 degrees in my example.

Bren MKI said it all. In over 20 years of melting ww and using ww alloys, I have never had a bad batch of metal either. I do exactly what he is saying: melt, skim what doesn't melt and then flux and skim again. I have never had a problem...

Hi Bruce,
I processed that first batch just as you and Doubless describe. I screwed somthing up though, that's obvious.

I got tired of standing over a pot for three hours and haveing to toss 50% of my bullets back. If I was just making .44's for Cowboy, I probably wouldn't even care becuse they'ed be "good enough" for that game.
As for Zinc weights, I found 6 in less 60 pounds last night. And this last batch is from a little town in rual VA. There's more in there I'm sure, I must have 300# in that crate.

I feel like I've wasted a lot of time fighting what should be a peice of cake. So its time for SCIENCE, or what passes for it my garage. Maybe its closer to alchemy. Now if I could just turn all that suspect alloy into gold. LOL

Before you end up throwing all your WW away do as was suggested and crank up the heat. Adding a bit of tin doesn't hurt either but it's not something that has to be done.

Pat

You have to cast ww's hot, the bullets will be frosted when they come out of the mold. If your in the temp range that produces shiny bullets, you'll also have wrinkles and incomplete fillout around the lube grooves and cannalures.

I cast somewhere around a ton of bullets from ww's in the past few years, from 6.5mm up to 50 cal and every mold manufacturer and mold material you can think of, and every one of them would make good bullets. You do have to learn the intricacies of the molds to see how they like to be cast, some will get base porosity if poored too fast, others aren't picky, brass bodies seem the most tempermental of not too hot, and not too cold.

Rusty Marlin,
Thanks for the insight on the brittle weights with the voids. I'll have to take a look at that, the next time I smelt weights.

My last batch of clip-ons yielded two or three zinc weights out of two 5-gallon buckets, using the skim-as-soon-as-it-melts method to sort out the zinc weights.

Many weights are painted these days, so you can't judge a weight by its color.

I segregate the tape-on weights and use them for black powder or for soft noses.

WW casts best with a generous sprue hole and a matching pour stream diameter. I like to use an overpour technique, continuing to pour into the sprue hole even after the cavity is full, and letting the excess fall back into the pot. My WW pot is normally set to 675° - 750°, depending on the mold.

WW is best suited to bullet designs having large bands, and especially heavy big bore bullets. The smaller bands and smaller calibers are not impossible to cast with WW, but you may have to try harder.

Have never had a problem with zinc weights. Have never had to run the RCBS pot at full blast either. I tend to use Lyman or H&G steel 4 and 6 cavity molds which retain a fair amount of heat once they're hot.

Usually do the first melt of wheel weights in an iron pot over propane because it keeps the majority of the crap out of the electic pot and that keeps the alloy cleaner when making bullets.

I seriously doubt that zinc is your problem. In fact, that is the last thing I would investigate as a source of trouble.

Poor fill out and voids have several causes, the melt is too cool, the mold is too cool, the mold has not been cleaned of oils properly.

Get a thermometer if need be, but your alloy shoud do fine at temperatures between 500 and 700 degrees. More is not nessicary, less will be obviusly problematic. If the metal is throughly melted and flows freely, that is all that is needed. It ain't rocket science. Better men than both of us cast boolits for years without therometers or other niceties.

CLEAN THE MOLD!!!! Take some laquer thinner to it and clean it. If youare not satisfied with that method, boil it in soapy water, but the oils must be REMOVED. There is no substitute. So get it clean.

Quit examining every bullet you pour. Time for that later. Casting is a heat driven exercise. Every minute you spend looking at your product while the melt is hot, the mold is loosing precious heat. The best way to keep the mold hot is not by increasing melt temp but rather by increasing casting cycle time. Casting must be a steady rythme. This does not nessicarily mean moving as fast as you can move, but rather keep the mold filled with hot metal. Fill it, let the sprue cool, open the mold, drop the boolits, refill. You can look at your product as the sprue cools, but don't waste time. You can cull later. The more consistant your rythme, the more good boolits you will make.

Finally, don't scale weigh everything unles it is for competition. All your scale will show you is minor weight variations as the melt heats up and cools down as volumn changes and you add fresh metal. If it looks good on the outside it prolly is, least wise good enough to shoot informally. You'll be amazed how good a bad bullet will shoot. Prove it to yourself and shoot a few, that way you can get over any silly needs for perfection. I realize that may sound crass, even condesending, but till you shoot some that you know are bad and see just how well they will shoot, you'll drive yourself nuts throwing away perfectly shootable boolits. Life is too short to go crazy over how good a cst boolit shoots. What did it cost you, 3 cents at the outside? Relax, cast, shoot and enjoy. Then go have some bourbon and Coke or a beer and congrateulate yourself on a job well done.

I have said before that one never gets too old to learn something, but tonight was a real eye opener... I melted a pot of wheel weights, and broke out my Lyman 180-grain WC mould. I have in the past had pure heck getting wadcutters to fill out like they were supposed to, but tonight, for some reason it all came together. I set the pot at ~760, and pre-heated the mould on the stove.

I only cast about 150 projectiles, because it was getting late, and a two-cavity mould is kind of tedious. But here is the bottom line: I took five of the bullets and scaled them. They are all within .2 grains!!??? I have NEVER had that kind of luck with wheel weight metal. Paul, you, BFRshooter, and Popenman are all correct. It works, but darned if I understand why... I will cast another hundred or so in the morning, but this beats all I ever saw!

Hopfully I'll get a chance to try all this info this week.
When I was using 20:1 the bullets would come out great. When I tried WW is when I ran into problems.
The rythm for WW is definatly different. I bought a thermometer (and used it) and found that in my mold (Lee 246gr, .38-55) that my best results with the WW melt up around 825. Cooler than 760 or so and it got slushy.
I bought the thermometer after trying WW and dicovering that they cast well with in a much narrower temperature band than 20:1 and was hoping to control my reject rate through better temperature control, and it helps some, but not as effective as I thought it would be.
Before I mess with the suspect lot of ingots I will render down some new ones out of sorted stock and see what I get. If I have time I'll play with the suspect stuff, keep the temp down and see what floats up.

Johnnypaul, I know better than to look at every bullet as it comes out. But I do seem to be missing the "relax and enjoy" part of the process. LOL

Everyone should expect to have more problems with zinc in the future. European auto companies were required (regulations, not suggestions) to end the use of lead wheel weights a year or two ago. They will undoubtedly be going to zinc. Of course, when the tires are replaced over here, they will be replaced with lead ones. But that will almost certainly mean there will be some zinc in what we get in the future.

BTW, I did have a small amount of zinc in one batch I was melting down, cleaning, and putting into ingots. I was not using a regular lead casting pot. It was a souped up propane (plumbers) torch. I think the suggestion to scoop up everything as soon as possible is a good one, provided you are using a regular melting pot. They are slow enough that it would probably work. Mine melted them too fast. Increasing the heat and adding tin did not work. The 20# batch was thrown out and I spent an afternoon cleaning the pot.

I put all of my Wheel-Weights into a large pot on a propane cooker (I got it with an aluminum pot to cook fish) melt the weights stir with a large dipper that has holes in it. Scoop out all the clips stir some more until it looks clean and dip out all the rest of the crap. I cut the tops off pop cans rinse out them let them dry for a couple of weeks upside down (water in a can will cause an explosion) pour the cans full of Cleaned wheel-weight lead. Let them cool and peal off the aluminum can. It makes nice size ingots for my RCBS Pro Melt. When I cast I turn up the Pro Melt temperature, put the mould on a heat plate on high to pre heat the mould. I cast a few until they fill out nice let the sprue cool down enough to look solid and strike the cutter with a wood mallet. When the lead starts to smear on the top of the mould it is to hot slow down a little. I have found out later from someone (Paul I think) if I drop the bullets into a 5 gal bucket of water they will be harder. I bought eleven hundred pounds of wheel-weights once and it has been shot up for about 15 years. A little idea of how much I used to shoot.

I cast a 3 pound and a 1 pound coffee can full of bullets at one time and they last quite a while.

Casting is fun if you don’t make it hard work by doing a lot of unnecessary steps.

Interesting discussion here fellas.

Even I may have learned a few new things. I've been casting bullets and sinkers since a kid in the 50's with my grandpa.
Now days I only have/use Lee 6 cavity molds as I want production when I'm working on that stuff. I'm not all that particular either. When I cast, no matter what it is, they drop from the mold into a bucket of cool water between my feet, or next to them.

When I'm melting a large quantity. After having an idiot working with me one day that knocked the 12" kettle over around our feet. I got the idea to weld up an over sized pot much like Lee's ProPot IV. What I came up with works slick for massive melts. Anyway I can send pictures to you guys, or post them on here I'd be willing to share. OR you can go to Saubier.com and scroll down til you find the post by Daryl: "George's lead melting pot".

It's 6" deep, 9" dia, has heat shields around the legs and one around the pot itself. They just slip on. It's fired by a weed burner, the scrap is placed on a sand screen placed on top and is melted by a second weed burner. The melt flows thru the screen into the pot mix, what don't melt, either burns up, or is bullet jackets mostly as that's the scrap I use most of the time. OR steel clips from WW as you guys have.
What's nice about my set up, the jackets can be sold for scrap brass IF it don't have lead crap mixed in with it. IF it does, they don't want it at all. My system leaves it clean, just knock this stuff off the screen, or dump it. Anything that melts is part of the mixture and will make bullets or sinkers as I desire to cast. It's almost always hard, and it's always quite hot too. When the pot gets over half full, then it's drawn off with a bottom pipe controlled with a 3/4" stainless pin just like the Lee's pots are. As it squirts out the 1/2" pipe so fast it just bounces out of ingot molds. I catch it in a 10# ladle, then pour into 6 4-1# ingot molds and soon as it solidify's, it's dumped and more poured. One man can produce enough to keep even with 6 of these molds. I loaned this thing to a younger guy that works hard and fast. I also gave him 13 5 gal buckets of bullet scrap. In 8 hours he produced 1300# 1# ingots working by himself. I don't work that hard at it, so it takes me longer. One time two of us worked an hour and melted 10 gallons of scrap. I'd bet if three worked it, they could really produce.
Once I had 2700# in 1# ingots, that was enough. That also left me with about 60 buckets full. I've given lots of it away and am down to 23 buckets full yet and 1500# of ingots. When I cast, it might be several sessions, but, don' quit to do something else til I get a two gallon bucket full. I can make that many 147gr SWC's in about 4-5 hours casting, depends on how much interuptions happen.

Thing about zinc, that stuff really helps harden the metal. So, you want to keep the zinc, tin, and anything else that will melt about the same temp in your mixture.

I had problems with rejects too. Once I got a thermometer and keep the pot full within two pounds. and don't let the temp fall less than 750 my reject problem solved itself. Most of my castings come out frosted so that proves the melt is hotter than it needs to be. I turn the propot to max and when it drops enough to take an ingot, I slip one in. I try to keep a couple of them on the rim preheating so it don't cool too much when added. IF it does, I wait til the temp comes back up.

Around here, all the tire shops are on contract with a buyer. He discounts new weight prices by enough you can't rob these shops of WW's. They'd rather give you the cash from the register than WW's. But, since I cleaned out the basement of the indoor pistol range I don't have any need to pick up another piece of lead. But, that's hard not to do. Just a habit is all.

Check around and see if you can get scrap from an indoor range. This is already the perfect hardness. Even for m/l's, you only need soft stuff for bullets, hard round balls are fine too. Only thing you'll notice is the hard one's are harder to push down the bore.

Just my thoughts, anyone wants to see my melter send me an e/m with your address and I'll e/m them. georgeld@hotmail.com

When it comes to scrap, paint, plastics and other crap will burn off, so I don' worry about it.
George