Thread: Ice Storm Lead

Nice! I have a bucket too that I keep telling myself to clean but haven’t.

Of course this first pot didn’t even scratch the surface... the bucket I have weighs 106 lbs according to the bathroom scales. I can keep myself occupied for a while! Lol


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I have done a ton of wheel weights and scrap lead. don't be afraid of mixing in some 90% pure lead as it helps with pouring jigs. If your doing really small jigs just stay away from wheel weights as they have hardening alloys that don't flow or fill small jigs very well. It is a good base filler for the bigger jigs. You will learn over time as we all have. Keep the heat up with weights.

What Grumpy said. While I was driving truck over the road I would nose around in the maintenance shops. I would see a big bucket of weights and ask for them and was many times to take all I wanted. I’ve traded a lot of cleaned WW lead for things over the years. I try to hang onto the purer stuff for myself. Some of the weights I had to run the pot wide open to keep it flowing right, and couldn’t pour 1/32 minnow heads with some of it til I added some softer stuff.

Thanks for the tips guys. Now I know it all depends on what I’ve got in ww as to hardness but where would y’all start with mixing purer lead... say 1/2 and 1/2 ... more or less? I fish a 1/16 a lot but I definitely want to pour some small stuff to experiment with.


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1/16 and under I try to stay at 50% to 50% and if I know I'm pouring the little stuff I go 75% soft or more. I pour a lot of 3/8 oz up to 1 oz jigs so that is where I use most of my WW lead. I still plug the nozzle once in a while because I did not make a good clean ingot. POUR on Smitty

Thanks again, I’ll take any and all tips y’all will share.


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When you first begin melting the weights, keep a keen eye out. Many of them are in fact not lead. Zinc I believe. Anyways the lead weights melt first, then skim out the ones floating before the melt gets hot enough to melt them as well. This keeps you into better quality stuff. Of course try to use a large fan to push fumes away. If you can smell it, you are inhaling toxins.

Dry sawdust can help clean the mix. Add and stir and impurities will leave the mix and rise to the surface.

Or do like I did and skip all that by finding good lead. Sailboats use lead in their keels and can be an excellent source. Elevator companies. Gun ranges. Radiology equipment.

Obama dictated that lead production be stopped, so we can expect donors to tighten up.