Wheel weights to round balls?

[Travis Gregory]

I have several pounds of wheel weights with access to a whole lot more and was wondering,What is the best way to turn them into round ball? Do you melt em down and pour straight into a mold or do you turn them into ingots first (skimming off the impurities)and then re melt them and pour into molds? What is the process that you guys use? BTW I only want them for target shooting and save the Hornadys for hunting.

 

[bob308]

others will tell you different but the best way is to find some one that casts for smokless guns and trade for pure lead. all the books i have read said not to use w-w for black powder.

 

[woodsman1]

I been shootin wheel weights for neigh on to a year now. I just put em in my small Lee pot and when they melt, I seine out the steel clips.

I also stir the molten metal around after that, let it set for just a minute and skim off the sludge that raises to the top. From what I have been told this is Zinc as it is kinda clumpy and hard. Zinc takes a hotter temp to melt.

I then dip the molten wheel weight with a lg. table spoon and pour it into my heated .490 mould, let er set for bout 10 sec. and tap the sprue cutter with a wooden stick, open the mould and the purtiest silver .490 RB will drop onto my cushioned pad.

As I am an occasional shooter, I only cast up bout a hundred at a time, bout ever 3 mo. or so. Shoot em out of my TC Renagade with anywhere from 50 to 85 gr of 3f. All are pretty accurate and the cost is just pennies, as I got a 5 gal bucket of them for $10. Ain't seen no harm to my rifle gun yet.

Also borrowed a buddy's .60 cal mould and casted him up some for his smoothie and some for me as well. I was havin so much fun, I bought a .45 cal mould and did a hunered of them to shoot out of my daughter's rifle gun. BTW they do not expand well cause they are so hard.

I just don't think you could harm your barrel, as they are still much softer than the barrel steel. Some folks shoot them new fangled copper jacketed sharp pointed boolits, out of rifle guns with a lookin glass on top of it. Don't seem to harm them none too much either.

I'm gonna keep on a shootin these here home made rifle balls. Draw a fine bead on em son. Bobby

 

[Le Grand]

Turk, You would do best to cast the wheelweights into ingots. That way you'd clean the lead as you did so, then the ingots could be used when you need them or perhaps traded for something else.

 

[pulaskius]

The hardness of Wheel Weights can vary greatly. I have some for casting sinkers and jigs and the batch I bought is so hard that I had to add 50 percent pure lead to them as they were locking the mold shut after setting up to the point that I had to beat on the mold to get it open ... not a good thing !

Even after mixing pure lead with the wheel weights I have I still wouldn't put them in a rifle barrel of mine.

I'm not saying anyone is wrong about using wheel weights for PRB's ... but you need to check the hardness of the ones you have. Mine are so hard that I would be afraid to put them in a rifle barrel :shocked2:

 

[R.M.]

You didn't happen to water-drop them did you? That will harden them up right nice.

 

[bwhoffman]

I only shoot wheel weight lead in my 62 smooth bore. it dont care!
the rifles have a tough time engraving the patch due to the hardness. When they do go down(with much pressure to start) the do shoot fine, just dont load as easy as soft lead.

 

[pulaskius]

You didn't happen to water-drop them did you? That will harden them up right nice.

No, just poured them into ingots and let cool to room temperature. I bought 100 lbs and they are all the same .. hard as nails

 

[LaBonte]

I only shoot wheel weight lead in my 62 smooth bore. it dont care!
the rifles have a tough time engraving the patch due to the hardness. When they do go down(with much pressure to start) the do shoot fine, just dont load as easy as soft lead.

Brett - try using a thinner patch in the rifle. WW's cast a slightly larger ball than pure lead.

And yep I've been using WW's in my muzzleloaders since the mid-1970's. Hardened lead was used historically in particular for big game loads and many of us here in the west who hunt game bigger than deer (elk) like them due to the better penetration through heavy muscle and even bone...

 

[musketman]

Once you melted down the WW and skilled off the gunk and fished out the clips, add a pinch of wax to the molten metal. (bee's wax, candle wax, whatever you have is fine)

This will smoke like an old Edsel with bad piston rings, just hit the smoke with a match to burn it off. The wax will bring up any impurities in the lead (like dirt and oils), skim this dross off before pouring.

 

[MSW]

i agree with Musketman.

by the way, there's an article on this by the Bevel Brothers in MuzzleBlasts a while ago.

 

[Rancocas]

I've been using wheel weights for years. In fact, any lead I get all goes into the pot together. WW's, spent bullets dug out of the ground, lead pipes - whatever.
I melt it all together in an old cast iron plumber's pot on my campstove. Like others have told you, I flux with bee's wax and skim off the dross.
I use the same lead for fishing sinkers and duck decoy anchors.
When casting round balls, I use an iron dipper and pour the molten lead directly into my bullet molds.
I'm not a competition shooter anymore, and not interested in pin-point accuracy. I use these wheelweight rd. balls for target practice AND hunting. I really don't care about the hardness. A patched lead ball shouldn't be touching the rifling anyway. The patch does that.
So what if my rd. balls don't expand much on big game. A .50 caliber hole is a 1/2 inch hole! I have found that it brings down deer and wild hogs just fine. :v

 

[longfowler]

I use WW lead all the time, and mix it with whatever other lead I have on hand to get it as soft as I can. But basically, if I can scratch it with my fingernail, it'll shoot - SB or rifle, doesn't seem to matter. just look out when re-using old bullets, if you pick up some spent .44 mag lead it will be hard as iron! but I've recovered balls that I cast from pure WW that were shot into snowbanks, and you can clearly see the patch texture swaged into the divots left by the rifling.

 

[spitpatch]

There are different kinds of wheel weights. the older type comes to a point or taper on each end. This is what most of us have used for casting in the past and may be ok for round ball, although I like softer lead. The other is what was or is used on mag wheels. The way you can tell is they will be more square on the ends and harder, they contain zinc. If you read any of the old Lyman Ideal casting books you will see that one small part zinc in the pot can mess things up. I think I remember it saying 1 part zinc to 10,000 can ruin a batch. I sort and pitch the mag weights. Hope this helps.

 

[cakes]

The wheel weights are soft enough to use for PRB. I go straight from wheel weights to bullets in my bottom pour Lee pot on a regular basis. Just be sure to flux.

The leftovers in the pot after casting is poured into ingot molds.

Be sure to measure your bullets. Different alloys can create different sized bullets from the same mold.