Now I need to have a melting party. Have been sorting these on and off for a couple of weeks as time allowed. I would guess I had 50 lbs of zinc and iron trash in the mix. I have another 10 gallons to pick up at a local tire shop now.

I have three five gallon buckets, each roughly 2/3 full, sitting on my garage floor waiting to be sorted.
All I need is time...

Ed

Ya doin' good.

The middle bucket is all clip ons while the two outer ones are the stick on wheel weights. I'm gonna guess there is around 150-175 lbs of stuff to melt down.

I would melt the two different types in separate smelts, and end up with two separate piles of ingots, because the lead alloy is different between the clip-ons and the stick-ons. That way you can blend alloys accurately in the final mix.

These were my last 2 hauls: 200lbs sorted in the buckets, and about 300lbs in the jugs.



Started melting down to 200lbs, and got about 130 - 140lbs done in a couple hours a few weeks ago.


Plus went through the jugs and found about 20lbs of zinc, steel, iron, valve stems, nuts and bolts. So now I have about 340lbs of sorted lead. Going to have to spread that over a couple session, for the sake of my back.

Are you guys selling the zinc and iron wheel weights to a recycler? If so, what's the going rate for zinc?

Ed

I just finished smelting a large batch of cable sheathing that I scored and started sorting wheel weights. What a PITA! Its not hard, just boring. I'm working my way thru 600-800#, and hoping to get finished in time to smelt them before it gets really hot. I had a pretty good year scrounging, last year, and hoping for a good year, this year. Lightman

I'd suggest "Smelt Sorting". Keep your alloy temps 650� (Zinc melts @ 785�)or so and the steel and zinc weights will magically float to the top where you skim them off. Easy breezy.

"Smelting" is the process by which metal is extracted from raw ore. Melting lead wheel weights into ingot form is, well, melting lead.

Well I extract the metal out of the pile of gunk, so I call it smelting.