Fish Sinkers????

[Gettysburg63]

I was wondering if deep sea sinkers are pure lead.

 

[necchi]

I doubt it.
There was/has been a move to get away from full lead sinkers for at least the last decade or so.
Cheaper alloys have been used now for a long time.
The only way to know fer sure is a hardness tester, :idunno:

 

[Billnpatti]

If you can find some old ones, they are usually made of lead. I imagine that the hardness is of little significance to the makers and they use whatever scrap they can round up. If you find some old sinkers, just use your fingernail to see if you can make a good scratch in the sinker, it is fairly pure lead. But, if you want to cast round balls for your rifle, while pure lead is preferable, it is not absolutely necessary. You can even use wheel weights to cast roundballs.

 

[George T.]

They used to be! However the tree huggers have them made out of harder material. Adding a few to each pot and skimming is probably ok but a pot full I doubt it! Geo. T.

 

[Scota4570]

Drop on a concrete floor. If it goes "klunk" it is pretty pure. Try to indent it with your thumb nail. If you can make a groove, pretty pure. If it rings when dropped or struck it is not pure or is not lead, ie zinc. I do not know if sinkers are zinc now. I do know wheel weights can be zinc and steel. Any anout of zinc ruins you pot of lead. Zinc can not be removed from the alloy by any method we have.