Lee Loader

Years ago my friends got me into casting, and wheel weights were around as well as linotype, they would melt fine in my old 10# Lee pot, but it took forever. A friend had a genuine "plumber's pot" which would probably hold more than 500#, and ran on "white gas" (unleaded for you younger folks). We would get together and bring all out ingot molds, and spend an afternoon filling them over and over. Monthly my job took me to another district about 300mi away that also had an Air Force base, where the town had car lots on every corner, and every kind of tire dealer putting new wheels and tires on the young folks new ride. I often came back with my 3/4 ton truck close to overloaded, but my friends and I had plenty of weights. I found a couple of radiator shops there, and I would give $20 for a 5 gal bucket of "solder' from their tank cleaning!
Our friend got transfered so in my spare time, my "helper" and I built a pot to make the weights managable, (he was a better welder than me!) Pipe for the body, 1/2" plate for the bottom, an RV water heater burner, and the rest scrap metal, well, the handle is a T/F case shifter from an old Willys! I still have lots of wheel weights, but running out of ingots, I resorted to melting them down in my casting pot even though it requires a lot of cleaning. I had hoped to render at least 5 buckets between Christmas and New Years, (we shut the shop down), but today is the first time we've had warm enough weather to attempt it. My large ingot mold had rust, top and bottom, so it didn't slide so well, and I spilt a little, and didn't quite get a bucket melted. I'll try again tomorrow if it's not too cold!
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Lots a work going on there. The "good" wheel weights everywhere have pretty much gone the way of the Do Do bird, I have a couple hundred pounds left to smelt and about the same in ingots but haven't melted a pot or cast a bullet in 5 or 6 years. My electric pot is stored away with about 10 pounds of wheel weight lead still in it. I have no idea when, or if, I'll ever get back to casting. My "smelting" pot is a 10 pound RCBS cast pot but I have no idea where it even is as I haven't rendered any metal down in close to 10 years. I'm a slacker. The truth of the matter is that the guns I used to cast for I seldom shoot anymore and I do have several hundred cast bullets for those calibers stored away. When it started looking like I was going to have to start buying lead, with shipping, the cost to continue the hobby started losing it's luster for me and I just started buying the bullets for the calibers I shoot most instead. Bummer..

I was surprised that the bottom half of the 2 buckets I melted was almost all large weights! I think I got about 200# of ingots.
Saturday, I went by my friends house who reloads commercially to see if he wanted to go shoot, but he was in the middle of casting some bullets with his new MP hollowpoint mold. I still had the ingots in the back of my truck, so I gave him 20# or so, he told me, (again) that he had lots of wheelweights, but I reminded him that half of them were zinc!

I haven't gotten into a huge score or even a good one .
I did score some aircraft billet , FAA certified, Beechcraft part numbered lead once . What a sad mess that was . It made great ML balls in spite of all the slag voids in the then 60 yr old control surface balance weights .

While I was gathering things together, I stumbled on some underground telephone wire from back in the day. I thought I had given it away to a friend to shoot in his smokepole, but remembered he only took half. It is pretty pure, I think he adds a touch of tin, not much, I treat it like "stick on" weights. I have the ingots as ballast on some my grinders/buffers in the shop.

I miss the days of ww and lino. My buddy's brother owned a metal scrap yard. We got lino for free. Tire shops would give you their wheel weights for free for not having to pay to haul them away. The golden days of casting.

Now, I'm resorting to buying range scrap smelted into meatloaf pan ingots. I still have to melt them down, cleaning/fluxing and pouring into ingots to feed the bottom pour pot.

Really miss the days when I was broke and wanting to shoot. Supporting not only my shooting habit but that of two teenagers. Bought a progressive press to load .38s when my buddy pointed out that it cost less to reload 38's that we cast than the 22lr.

Quite a few years back we had a range officer at the county range who would gather lead from the pistol berms. He was a cool guy, and I gave him some GC bullets to load for his 357m, a few weeks later I was driving out from a club shoot, and he waved me over. He loaded 2 buckets of range bullets probably 3/4 full in the back of my truck!
I sorted the jackets and wadcutters out, and melted the cast bullets into ingots, I split them with Pete, and we both enjoyed casting great, no hassle bullets for a while. I commented on the quality, and Pete said, "it has to be good, it's a blend of what everybody's idea of a perfect alloy is"!
I did buy some of the "Super Hard" additive, and cast some 44mag and 357sig GC, which came out nice, but is a little difficult to deal with. I finally used my press with a splitting maul to get the ingots into manageable pieces to alloy. Most of my casting is WW with solder for pistol bullets, but with no radiator shops anymore, I've bought from the 'bay, I generally try to pay $10 or less a pound shipped.

Free wheel weights for me. Trouble is the percentage is down to about 1/5 usable weights. I used to sort and take home the lead weights about once per year. But the yield was so low I haven't looked in a while. The other day I checked and the bin was nearly empty, mostly paper trash (pet peeve). I asked the hourly tire guy where the weights are. He said they throw them away every once and while. I tried to keep my composure and not wanting to let on that the weights have some value, I explained it was a pollution issue to put heavy metals in the land fill.

I need to go take whatever is there much more often.

I worked as a service manager for a dealership in the early 90’s. The boss invested in a Big O dealership on the lot, so I was getting lots of weights! A cantankerous old fart I shot with was questioning me about weights at the new store, I told him I had a deal, and I would bring him a bucket. Well, he went by and offered them money, no more free weights!