Clip on Wheel weights

[Texas Gil]

Thanks very helpful

 

[springfield art]

Any idea what the lead content of clip on wheel weights is? Anyone use these for casting round balls?

They result in too hard of a material. They may actually have dropped use of real lead in them over time. Modern bullet casters used to love them. Thanks BadDaditood for posting the excellent graph.

 

[springfield art]

View attachment 89012View attachment 89012
Here’s a hardness chart from yesteryear.
Telco lead and stick on WWs are 40/1, still plenty soft for MLers.
The old clip-on WW are lead alloyed with tin/antimony and a touch of arsenic.
Lead is being legislated out of existence, the new WWs are steel (magnetic) or zinc (Zn stamped into the mold)
At first Zinc will float in a lead melt but if hot enough it will melt too making an oatmeal like mess that absolutely ruins your lead and pot.

Than you for posting this! Some guys on this site are really on the ball! I'm not one of them!

 

[45man]

Keep your melt for ingots at 600 degrees and skim all that floats, do NOT flux until skimmed.
stick on weights vary all the way to pure zinc so beware of them, I just scrap all.

 

[Stony Broke]

I've used a lot of the old style of clip on weights for round balls, but I get it really hot first and stir it quite often. The tin being lighter will rise to the top and I just skim it off. After I'm not getting much to rise to the top, I use some wax and stir it through the lead too, and skim again. This has worked for me in years past, but anymore I have been given a lot of soft lead that didn't need to go through all that.

 

[dave951]

Wheel weights, just say no.

 

[nhmoose]

I also use WW for my smoothbores. No reason not to.

I would never use them in other than smoothbores in ML. I use as soft as I can get for the others.

I would never throw them out as I cast for all unmentionables but why waste a big supply on it for ML so smoothbores it is.

Zinc WW would also work on Smoothbores but you will catch crap for even thinking it. [besides casting zinc is hard to do]