lead

[MAN IN BLACK]

Where can I find lead to melt to make my own weights?

[skeet]

Go to a tire shop and purchase their removed wheel weights. They really do sell 'em now! Usta give 'em away!;)

[MAN IN BLACK]

i know my tire guy will know, but what is a wheel weight?

[fabsroman]

It is a little weight that they put on the lip of your rim, or if you have high performance rims like I have on my Mustang, they glue them to the inside of the rim so they cannot be seen. The wheel weights are there to balance the tire. Whenever a wheel feels like it is hopping all over the place, it is because it isn't balanced. The weights aren't that big, but they do the job. Quite amazing actually.

By the way, the ones that are put on the outer or inner lip of the rim are just smacked into place with a hammer.

I don't know if lead is still used in plumbing, but that is where my dad used to get it in 10 lb. ingots. Kind of like gold bricks, but only grey in color and worth a lot less instead.

[tjwatty]

Good luck,
I tried to find a commodity listing for lead but I'm just not a computer wiz, best I could find was $1500 a ton. I know it's gone way way up in the last year but I thougt it was around 5 or 6 hundred a ton. I have cat food cans full of wheel weight lead for our decoys and I'm thinking of selling now.
Wheel weight lead is very dirty lead, it has clips in it that need to be skimed off. DO NOT use a fishing weight pot to melt it, you will ruin it. We used a small cast iron pot on a turkey cooker and used a torch to get started. Don't completely empty the pot and it will melt faster. The metal clips will come to the surface and can be skimmed off with a metal ladel.
After you have you ingots poured that lead is a much better quality and can be re-melted in a pot.
Everyone probably already knows that to make a strip mold just router a couple of lines in a 2x4 and pour away.
Most of the lead we can get ahold of now goes to making shot for trap and skeet shooting.
Good luck finding it..

[skeet]

When I was making decoy weights i used muffin tins to make weights for geese. I also used a fair sized dipper and inserted the handles for the weights in it till they cooled enough. A friend just drilled a 1/2 inch hole in the edge and tied his lines there. I also used large cotter pins with the legs bent . Lots of ways to do it but think the drilled hole may be the best. I also made strip weights but if made from soft lead they will sometimes break in half as you bend them to hold in the bottom all the time. Oh and i often made my ingots with muffin tins filled all the way up. Much more convienient than loose wheel weights. Also I made shot but you do have to make sure the lead is a bit more pure than wheel weights. And I also had little bars of tin and antimony to add to the mix. Don't know if you can buy antimony any more. I used to get it from plumbing supply houses. Father in law was a plumber

[tjwatty]

I found it!!!!!!!!!! now I feel like an internet surfer...

In 05 lead was at around $800 a ton, it's high last year was approx. $4,000 per ton today it's around $2,500 per.
It's no wonder shot, batteries, and painted toys from China are so expensive...

skeet:
We have a guy that pours shot from wheel weight lead, I wouldn't recommend using it in competion as it is funny shaped and soft but seems to be ok for practice. Again I'm sure he's melting and skimming maybe even remelting.

[skeet]

I tried the shot from wheel weights and it didn't work all that well. If ya skim it pretty well when you melt it the first time then most of the impurities are gone. Then you do have to add some hardeners to it to make it work well. For skeet ranges in the 12 and 20 it is ok. Heck it has to be as good as reclaimed! After hardening it you can use it in the smaller guages but i recommend using the roundest you can get. You can do that by using a screen and ;etting it run down an angled board. I really got into it for a while...but it was just too much trouble to make large enough amounts. I was using as much as 3 ton a year myself and that got old. Even at 7-8 bucks a bag I was saving a fair amount of money:D And spending an awful lot of time:rolleyes: Then I had to load all those shells. Sheesh. Hardly had time to shoot

BTW wheel weights nowdays have an awful lot of different stuff in 'em. Not lead and tin like they used to be.

[MAN IN BLACK]

my and my dad do a little remodeling. If we were removing lead pipes, and putting in new plumbing would that work?

[fabsroman]

They actually made whole pipes out of lead any time in the last century? I'm just surprised, because my dad and I also used to do remodeling together and I never ran into lead pipes. Iron and copper have been my experience with most of the old ones.

[MAN IN BLACK]

i have never seen lead pipes either, but at my mom's old office which was a very old building I remember always having to let the water run a minute or two because they thought it had lead pipes. so that made me think they were still around.

I've got one good hit on the wheel weights, my mom is a manager at Wal-Mart so she is going to try to get all the weights from their tire center.

[fabsroman]

The lead used to be in the solder used to join copper pipes together, and pure lead was sometimes used to join iron waste pipes together. I have never heard of pipes actually made out of lead.

Nowadays, there is no lead in solder for copper pipes any more. They finally figured out that it is bad for us.

Good job on the wheel weights. If your mom can get those for you, you are looking pretty.

[skeet]

Ya ever heard the expression...Lead pipe cinch? There are still some places with lead pipes. Heck I know of a spring that is still in use that has a lead pipe for the overflow...that everybody got their spring water from. Frogs lived in the overflow too. Big ol' green ones!!:D :D When I moved out here I gave a friend about a ton (literally) of lead and there was quite a bit of lead pipe in it. My Father in Law took it out of a house the year he retired from plumbing. 1979. Wish I coulda brung it with me.

[fabsroman]

Skeet,

I have never heard the expression "Lead pipe cinch." That must be one of them Eastern Shore terms, kind of like some of the Baltimore terms I learned while I was working and going to law school up there.

Honestly, I never thought they made pipes out of lead during the last 100 years, but that goes to show you how much I know. I started working with my dad in the late 70's and only remember copper and galvanized pipe from back then.

[DelDuck]

One word of advise about the tire lead....WASH IT! I made the mistake of not doing that and had a ton of crud from the weights.
The old muffin tins work great, I tried to use old coat hangers and they work fairly well but will rust. Drilling a 1/2 inch hole seams like a good way to do it.

[Mr. 16 gauge]

Being a bullet caster, and with lead getting scarce just about everywhere, here is something I tried last year, and it worked pretty well.
I had some left over concrete (quikcrete) from a patio project, so I took some small cans (from snack pacs) and filled them with concrete then placed a piece of wire in the concrete and let it set....works well, albeit a little big. I've since used the leftover concrete to make weights for my gang rigs using various size tin cans, styrofoam cups, plastic cups, ect.
After the concrete is thoroughly dry, I take and give it a heavy coating of latex paint (you can usually find bargain paint at any home improvement store, usually in drab colors, for a bargain....just ask the manager. People bring it back because it's not the right color, ect). The paint helps protect the concrete as well as protecting the finish on the decoys as well.
FWIW