So you think you can cast...

[stilly]

Just a word to the NOOBS that are getting into casting. STAY OUT of wheel weights and lead unless it is already ingotized.

My god I melted down over 55lbs of lead between two nights ago and tonight and I LITERALLY smoked myself. I smell like a meth head crack whore now. Lovely.

I learned something tonight, the LESS CRAP I gotta pull out of the melting pot, the HAPPIER I am.

I WAS using the Palmer Hot Pot but tonight I fired up my new Lee Pro 20 melter.

I was NOT thrilled that it seemed to never stop taking all of the little wheel weights that I was dropping into it. I must have put over 40 of them in and still had room for more. I was like, DAMN and then it hit me that I will have to pull out all of those clips, with my hemostats, and put them somewhere out of the way (next to the melter on the metal plate).

SO Now I have a PILE of clips and DROS next to the melter. I am letting it cool down for the night. I had it on the wooden desk so I left it there after I unplugged it and it should be good.

but DAMN. I can drop in 20 little wheel weights and they might make the pot rise about a half inch or so. SUCKS. Then I have clip after clip after clip that I gotta yank out.

It is NOT worth my time.

If you want to cast, BUY your lead already in ingots OR at LEAST get solid lead with less crap in it. Wheel weights with the adhesive backs are okay because you can skim that garbage off the top, but the clips or bullets, SUCK. Bullets actually might not be too bad, but those clips SUCK...

I am now wondering WHY I paid $30 for a 21LB box of wheel weights when I could have spent $74.75 for a 67lb box of INGOTS fluxxed two-three times and ready to melt...

BTW, I still do not know what the hell I am doing when I flux. I pour in some napalm (wax soaked sawdust) or pine shavings and stir it around but AIGHT, then what is it supposed to do? Besides smoke I mean...

So anyways, God I can not wait to clear this bucket out cause then I am going for ingots only. Post carriers are gonna love me when I make a 670lb order... But yeah anyways, castboolits is your friend, that guy there (Jetsetter or Jets Fan) will sell it for $1.15/lb already ready to go...

This is crap. like 6 hours spent now and yeah I got ingots, but they are all frosty looking and CLING when they hit the concrete so these clip on wheel weights SUCK. (because I really just want pure lead). And the smoke and the fumes... Geeze...

OH and DON'T SWEAT AS YOU ARE OVER THE POT! OKay I am done for the night.

Lead in the pot



Still got a lot more smaller things



Clips at end of session



Clips next to it



I can buy this lead for $1.15 per lb... Already cleaned and ready to use.



The ending pile tonight

[SonofWWIIDI]

Live and learn Stilly, live and learn.

[anyracoon]

Go to Harbor Freight and buy a cast iron dutch oven and use that to smelt and blend your lead, over a outdoor propane burner. Save your small electric casting pots just for casting. I usually wait till I have a 100 pounds or so then do it in one large batch.

[rsrocket1]

$30 for 21 pounds of wheel weights???? How many pounds of clean alloy did you end up with? Did you do the math before you bought the weights?
I thought you were into math or computer science or something like that.

Honestly, shooters used to smelt wheel weights when they were free for the asking at tire shops or maybe you could give the guys a case of beer for a 5 gallon bucket full every few months. Now that the tree huggers banned lead wheel weights in most of the country, it's pretty much unavailable or overpriced (case in point).

Typically, smelters sort out all the iron or zinc weights and put all the stuff in a big cast iron pot about the size of a Dutch oven or a propane tank with the top half cut off and heated with a turkey fryer burner or a Harbor Freight seed burner. You shouldn't use the pot you cast with for smelting. Now you'll have to clean that out if you don't want junk in your bullets. Hopefully you didn't do it with a Lee bottom pour pot or you'll need to clean the spout out really good too. Smelters also tend to do this way out in the country. The guy I bought my first ingots from went out to some open range land and spent the afternoon making several hundred pounds that way. Smelly smoke is part of the business and the farther you are from everyone else, the better.

$1/pound for ingotized range scrap, sheet lead (pure) or "mystery" boat keel lead is common. You can typically get 50-65# worth of the stuff for that price plus postage of a USPS large flat rate box. Often you can get it cheaper if you are willing to buy it FTF from someone.

Stilly, just like having to pull 200 bullets because of a mistake in loading, think of this as penance or a lesson in the principals of cast bullets that cost you only $30 (plus some smelly labor). On the positive side, at least you got 15-18 pounds of good #2 alloy out of it.

Thanks for sharing your ordeal and not wishing it on others getting into casting. Yes, lead is more expensive that even a few years ago, but it is still way cheaper than store bought bullets.

Hope you have a good night's rest.

[TKM]

Get a slotted steel spoon about a foot long. Scoop out all of the garbage at once.

I dump the debris into a hubcap I found in the yard one day. Fill it with water first to cool things down.

[sghart]

In the old days when wheel weights were free I would collect them and save them until I had a few 5 gallon buckets full. I would them set aside a Saturday morning when it was cool and smelt them down in an old Dutch oven over a propane burner. My sons were young at the time and they would help.

Before I smelted I would dump them out on a tarp and test each one with a pair of pliers. The soft ones went into the smelting pot, the hard ones (zinc, in those days there were very few) would go in the dumpster.

A 5 gallon bucket would hold close to 120 lbs of tire weights. Smelting and removing the debris would yield 80% by weight or about 95 lbs of usable lead. I poured them into ingots and stored them

I got to re-live those experiences last summer. I ran into a guy through my work who was moving out of California. He had several buckets full of wheel weights. I bought all he had. This time I had my grandsons helping me.

The lack of availability of lead weights in California makes large scale smelting rare so I buy my lead from the private sellers at Cast Boolits. Even at $1 a pound shipped the bullets are only 2.3 cents apiece for .38 caliber. Casting is a great addition to a reloaders skill set.

As a side note it is amazing how fast you can empty a 20 lb lead pot when you are pouring 405 grain bullets!

[Sky_DiveR]

I used the slotted spoon also. I don't bother with wheel weights anymore since the lead ban on wheel weights. Wasn't worth it for a few ounces per bucket.

[stilly]

$30 for 21 pounds of wheel weights???? How many pounds of clean alloy did you end up with? Did you do the math before you bought the weights?
I thought you were into math or computer science or something like that.

Honestly, shooters used to smelt wheel weights when they were free for the asking at tire shops or maybe you could give the guys a case of beer for a 5 gallon bucket full every few months. Now that the tree huggers banned lead wheel weights in most of the country, it's pretty much unavailable or overpriced (case in point).

Typically, smelters sort out all the iron or zinc weights and put all the stuff in a big cast iron pot about the size of a Dutch oven or a propane tank with the top half cut off and heated with a turkey fryer burner or a Harbor Freight seed burner. You shouldn't use the pot you cast with for smelting. Now you'll have to clean that out if you don't want junk in your bullets. Hopefully you didn't do it with a Lee bottom pour pot or you'll need to clean the spout out really good too. Smelters also tend to do this way out in the country. The guy I bought my first ingots from went out to some open range land and spent the afternoon making several hundred pounds that way. Smelly smoke is part of the business and the farther you are from everyone else, the better.

$1/pound for ingotized range scrap, sheet lead (pure) or "mystery" boat keel lead is common. You can typically get 50-65# worth of the stuff for that price plus postage of a USPS large flat rate box. Often you can get it cheaper if you are willing to buy it FTF from someone.

Stilly, just like having to pull 200 bullets because of a mistake in loading, think of this as penance or a lesson in the principals of cast bullets that cost you only $30 (plus some smelly labor). On the positive side, at least you got 15-18 pounds of good #2 alloy out of it.

Thanks for sharing your ordeal and not wishing it on others getting into casting. Yes, lead is more expensive that even a few years ago, but it is still way cheaper than store bought bullets.

Hope you have a good night's rest.

I thought it would be FUN to mimic what folks used to do so that I can appreciate what I have now. Just like I thought it was FUN to buy a single shot 12GA from a gun show when I was 16 yrs old and walk out that day with it. THAT was FUN and exciting. Would I buy a single shot 12GA now? NO. They aint FUN when you have a Mossberg 930 SPX or Beretta Xtrema... Can you put a price on FUN? Yeah I guess it is $30 for THIS story.

Some times I like to get all retro like. Well, not really, but sometimes.

HERE is the good news though. THe guy taht sells the fluxxed lead across the country told me that there was no ban on lead back there and it must have ONLY been a western/commiefornia thing because he moved about 22k lbs of lead last year and he was gearing up for about the same amount or so this year. That was after I asked him if he could move 670lbs of lead.

Big Bronco had a good idea though, he said that he will only buy tires from tire stores if they throw in a bucket of wheel weights. My VIC needs new tires... Guess I will go on that quest.

Oh yeah, those lead adhesive ones really are much better than the clip on ones. Those clip ons really slow me down, but the adhesive, melt nice and produced LEAD ingots. Once I tossed in some wheel weights the ingots frosted up and clinked out of the mold...

[sunborder]

I got my weights just before the balance between the zinc and lead tipped in favor of the lead. My backstock weights still yields 80% lead by overall weight. Got enough to last me a lifetime, and a good part of my daughters, unless she shoots a LOT.

Like others here have said. You really should smelt in another pot, making clean ingots. If you can't do that, then you can buy virgin alloy of known composition for about $2.50 a pound, which works out to $0.056 per 158 grain bullet. Store-bought lead bullets are twice that cost, so it's still a good savings. If you pay $1 per pound for weights, and get a 50% production rate, that's about $2 per pound, which isn't much less than store-bought alloy. If you are willing to trust ebay, you can get scrap for about half that price. It kind of depends on what you are loading for to see if it's worth it.

I only load for .38 spl, 9mm, and 7.62x54R (mostly gallery loads at low velocity, a few gas-checked mid-range loads). I can get away with a fairly soft alloy, but I also have a lot of tin solder lying around to help with mould fill-out/hardness.

I'm guessing you are just looking to load for low-medium velocity pistol, so range scrap and a bit of tin should be enough for your needs.

[sunborder]

The problem with those stick-on weights, is that many of them are much more pure lead (too soft), and are better for black powder cartridge loading, or even muzzle-loading black powder if pure enough. It's often a different alloy than the clipped wheel weights, which are closer to #2 or hardball alloy.

If you REALLY want to hear from the experts, head over to castboolits.com.

[stilly]

I got my weights just before the balance between the zinc and lead tipped in favor of the lead. My backstock weights still yields 80% lead by overall weight. Got enough to last me a lifetime, and a good part of my daughters, unless she shoots a LOT.

Like others here have said. You really should smelt in another pot, making clean ingots. If you can't do that, then you can buy virgin alloy of known composition for about $2.50 a pound, which works out to $0.056 per 158 grain bullet. Store-bought lead bullets are twice that cost, so it's still a good savings. If you pay $1 per pound for weights, and get a 50% production rate, that's about $2 per pound, which isn't much less than store-bought alloy. If you are willing to trust ebay, you can get scrap for about half that price. It kind of depends on what you are loading for to see if it's worth it.

I only load for .38 spl, 9mm, and 7.62x54R (mostly gallery loads at low velocity, a few gas-checked mid-range loads). I can get away with a fairly soft alloy, but I also have a lot of tin solder lying around to help with mould fill-out/hardness.

I'm guessing you are just looking to load for low-medium velocity pistol, so range scrap and a bit of tin should be enough for your needs.

The guy back east sells me lead at $1.15/lb for twice+ fluxxed ingots. They are BEAUTIFUL.

I got lucky and got a guy on ebay to sell me 100 LBS of ingots at $104 SHIPPED. They were ALSO beautiful, clean all good stuff. So I have close to about 250+ lbs of ingots now. I figured that this lead smelter from Lee, being a bottom pour would work good, I could skim off the top and pour from the bottom and all would be good. And for the most aprt it is but it says that I am not to melt tin in it. WTF? I should ask them why.

Oh and No. I do not think I want to try any dutch oven with propane burner. I mean, MAYBE, but the weight and setup/construction needed to hold the weight, no thank you. At least not now.

[Pablo5959]

You should check out FolkerOut.
He has a bunch of brand new in box never seen the light of day,
Large WW for .75 lbs.
And he's out there in SoCal.
And Stilly.
This has to be one of those strange treads you start just to get a conversation going, because I know, you know not to put garbage in your casting pot.
Pablo

[rsrocket1]

After work and before dinner, this is what I poured out in about an hour this afternoon:



That's what you should be using your Lee pot for!

These are C309-200R's that work well in subsonic .308 loads. No GC needed, just lubed with 2:1 beeswax/Vaseline, sized and shot with 6.5g Red Dot. These were shot last week @ 50 yards.

[bruce381]

""I am now wondering WHY I paid $30 for a 21LB box of wheel weights when I could have spent $74.75 for a 67lb box of INGOTS fluxxed two-three times and ready to melt...""

cause its fun? thats why I buy cleaned range lead at about $1 lb DEL.

[CSACANNONEER]

Lucky for me, I haven't had to buy lead yet but, over the years, I've melted 100s of pounds of wheel weights in a little Palmer. I finally decided to use a big cast pot and turkey fryer to do about 300lbs of WW, range pick up and sheet lead. It is so much easier.