Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire For a six pack of Bud lite

I got a tire mounted and balanced and a 5 gal bucket of wheel weights.
The guys over at Cast Boolits say a 5gal bucket of wheel weights is about 100lbs. I'll figure I'll lose 25lbs to steel clips, zinc weights and other trash. 75lbs x 7000 grains per pound is 525000 grains. Figure 260 grains for my heaviest bullet. Divide 525000 by 260 and get 2019 bullets.
that's a pretty good deal for a six pack of Bud Lite!

Well, at least you didn't have to trade off some real beer.

If you cast round balls, get acquainted with some roofers. When they tear a roof off of a flat building, the drains are usually lined with pure lead that normally ends up in a dumpster. A typical drain will have 10 to 20lb of lead. A few cartons of that Bud could get you a lifetime supply.
It'll be stuck to asphalt so it needs to be melted outside because it's going to smoke like crazy burning it off.

NICE!!!

Good job! I have a friend who gets me wheel weights from their shop. In this day and age, all shooters should get set up to cast bullets.

BTW, wheel weights generally are a good enough alloy to cast and shoot as is for smokeless powder cartridges. Getting flashing, battery lead, etc. will be black powder stuff.

My thoughts exactly, get rid of crappy beer and get something useful.

BTW a full 5 gal pail will yield over 100#'s of ingots.

Heckuva score.

FWIW, I've weighed a few buckets of WW's and a 5 gallon bucket filled level with the mouth usually runs 135 on my game scale.

I just rely on the paint chips I ate as a kid.

But sriously.
Plumbers and roofers and tire changers have HUGE stashes of good quality lead.

Not that I would know...

The bucket weight seems light to me. I had a buddy who owned an alignment/tire store, and he often gave me buckets that went nearly 150 lbs. I could cast a LOT of .45 bullets with one bucket, or 9mm/125s, and you could stretch the numbers even more.

Charlie gave me some of those wheelweights, but I did buy tires from him now and then. We were also co-founders of a pistol club, though.

Yes, that IS light, and can likely be attributed to the ZINC weights that are in use now.

Controlling the smelting temperature of your initial "salvage" melt has never been more important,...and given that it's done outdoors, I'm as guilty as the next guy in tending towards running HOT.

Here's a good excerpt from a well written treatise on wheelweights:


Good refresher, I enjoyed re-reading it.
Link: http://www.castpics.net/subsite2/GeneralReference/Whats%20with%20wheel%20weights.pdf

There's all SORTS of weird materials turning up in wheel weights now,....work carefully, and STAY UPWIND.

Greg

I haven't weighted a bucket so I don't know what the actual weight would come out to. I DO know that it was darn heavy getting it out of the truck.

My neighbor used to own a tire shop in Jackson and I got a couple of buckets from him before he went out of business. I can cast an awful lot of bullets. I just need time to go shoot them after they're cast.

You did good.

I gave away 6 5 gallon buckets of wheelweights to a buddy when I got divorced and the ex was bitchin' about them being in the garage.

Tell ya what,...knock the bullets out in 5 gallon bucket about half filled with water. Learn to time it so you're knocking them out when they're barely solidified enough to hold their form. After 24 hours they'll do about 18 BNH and can be driven pretty fast.

You'll notice if you measure them that straight wheelweight alloy sizes up just a bit less that alloy with 2% tin added. In RCBS and Lyman molds they'll fall from the mold right on size.

If you run them through a sizing die that rubs them down, you'll soften to outer surface of them and they'll lead the barrel at lower velocities.

Use a sizing die .001" larger than the diameter of the bullet to put the lube in the grooves and quench cast wheelweight bullets will work very well.

One other thing,...you'll need to peck the alighment pins in the Lyman molds through until they're sticking out about .005" farther in order to get the mold halves to line up properly.

Do that and Lyman molds will produce very round bullets.

If you don't, you'll find that the sizing die will rub a bit on one side and a bit on the other,..even if the die is .001" oversize.

After he gave you all that you didn't even buy him some beer?

I asked what I owed him. He stated, "why don't you just drop by a six pack of beer" I said what flavor? He said " Bud lite"

Who am I to argue?

Bristoe,
I'm loading my 45colt with 19gr of 2400 under that 260. I don't know how fast it's going but it's pretty stout.
I'm loading a 158gr lwsc out of my 357 with 8gr of green dot. It's cooking right along as well.
Neither leads the barrel. I'm using bens red lube. It works like a champ even in rifle loads so I'm told.

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?269207-Making-Ben-s-Red

I have read that if you water quench the bullet, it will loose that hardness over time. I have no way of proving that. Great when done though.

If you take a white piece of paper and try to draw a line on it with the wheel weight, zinc won't make a mark, lead will.

I usually just drop them on the concrete. If it thuds its lead. If it clinks, it isn't.

I use wire cutters or dykes to sort lead from others. The wire cutter will easily dig into a lead WW, but not into zinc or steel ones.