Shame on me. I haven't cast a bullet since about 1986. Today, I broke out my gear, went to the local tire stores and brought home two 5 gal buckets of wheel weights. I'm hearing a few things on the net which concern me and I wanted to make sure I'm not going to mess up my mix.

I'm seeing what looks to be more recent WW's; cleaner, some that sparkle. Their are some with markings such as

AL
AL-MC
AW
A

I'm afraid anything with an "A" on it may be aluminum.

Also I hear the stick-on's are closer to pure lead than WW.

I could use some direction since I haven't melted a WW since 1985.

I'm using the Lee Production Pot with the temp control if that matters.

Thanks

Alan

You are not going to find any aluminum wheelweights

It's like a "lead balloon" or "helium ballast"

AD

you will see some that say Zn.-zinc or Fe-iron.
neither of which will melt below 700* or 750* for that matter.
the stick on ones are softer then regular ww's
i just leave all the little pieces in my mix though.
as for the 38/357 and 44 mag class with plain base i can go as high as 50 pure 50 ww and have no problems.

Melt the WW initially in an old steel or cast iron pot, pour into ingots and keep your casting pot cleaner. If you have a thermometer, heat/melt at between 650 and 700 degrees and any zinc weights can be skimmed off with the rest of the junk. Stick-on WW are usually close to pure lead and are useful for casting for muzzle loaders or softening clip-on WW alloy. you will also find some steel WW these days, and non-lead WW are going to become more and more common in future! Get as many buckets as you can NOW! Have a great day and welcome back to the casting world.

there's a "friendly new guy" poster here on AR that insists "wheelweight" is a materials mixture, of known and adherred to standard ...
I was laughing so hard I couldn't reply

Spent the remainder of Saturday afternoon melting down the small 4 gal bucket of WW. Seperated out the the stickon's to "soften" up the WW ingots if needed. Kept my Lee Production pot between #5 and #6 on the thermostat and sure enough 2-3 slipped by me and floated to the top. Also used either a pair of pliers to feel for softness or took a old flat blade screw driver and hammer and could simply skewer the lead WW's or it would bounce off the harder, not lead ones. Ended up with 56 lbs of WW ingots. Still got the larger 5 gal bucket to go through next time we have a nice day out.

Thanks guys!

Now to get to figureing out what molds to buy for my Ed Brown 1911 and Ruger NMBH in 45 LC.

Alan