Originally Posted by MColeman
that you find today. When I cast thousands of bullets for handguns about 40 years ago I used mostly wheel weights with good success. Now I find that wheel weights are vastly different. When I melt them down there is a huge amount of 'sludge' forming on the surface of the molten metal. Is this zinc? What to you guys do with it? It's a real pain and I have 7 five gallon buckets of wheel weights that I will eventually melt down if I live long enough.

It's going to be a real pain to have to sort through them but if that's what it takes to remove the weights that are not lead then I have no choice, I suppose.

I'm beginning to cast bullets for my 30-30 and .300 Savage and I am using a Lee Production pot with a setting of about 6-7. I find the driving bands on the bullets are not fully filled out and I suspect I need the lead to be hotter. Right?

I've read of so many that use Lee equipment but I just can't get the idea out of my head that lower priced equipment will not perform as well as Lyman, Redding-Saeco and RCBS. I am not trying to 'cheap out' and have no aversion to spending if it will give me better results.

Any advice you can give will be most appreciated. Many thanks, Mickey


The zinc weights have more of a silver color and sand texture than the lead WW. Lead will be a grayish color and the weights will likely show some sort of damage from use. Zinc will be less damaged. Zinc also gives off a distinct sweet sickening odor that smells like hot galvanizing on an overheated stovepipe when melting. I've found them floating in the lead melt. Get them out. The less dense metals such as bullet jackets when melting range recovered lead and zinc weights will float to the top. The steel clips also float.

The other junk gets skimmed off the top until you have a mirror, silvery melt. Just have an old coffee can or other junk metal contain to dump your slag in. And old spoon works fine for skimming.

If your bullets aren't filling out, your molds may be too cool or you may need to add some tin solder to your melt. If your bullets are coming out frosty looking, your molds are too hot. It doesn't hurt them. But if they are frosty and aren't filled out completely, add some tin.

Also wrinkly bullets indicate the mould temp is too low.

You also might want to consider getting a cast iron melt pot just to melt your sorted WWs or recycle recovered range lead and pour them into ingots such as an old muffin pan and use your production pot strictly for melting your ingots and casting.

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