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I have been asked a lot of questions about using wheel weights as ballast on rec.boats.building so I thought I would try to summarize my knowledge on this page. 

Some safety tips before we begin.  LEAD IS POISONOUS!  Lead in your blood stream can cause all sorts of problems. In small children it can cause learning disabilities.  If you treat it reasonably, there is nothing to be afraid of.

• Thoroughly wash your hands and arms after handling lead
• Dedicate one set of clothing to wear when working with your lead and wash them separately from other clothing.
• Keep any children away from your lead.
• When melting wheel weights work in a well ventilated area and keep a fan blowing the fumes away in a safe direction.
• Do your melting in a few large sessions rather than a lot of little ones.  That makes it easier to keep the lead in one place.
• Clean your work area of splash, flash and spilled weights after every melting session.
• Do not allow any moisture AT ALL near your molds EVER!
• Regulations

There are EPA regulations concerning recycling lead. An EPA registered recycler (junkyard) and a few company owned tire stores will not sell to you without a permit. You don't want to buy from a recycler anyway.  They pay about six cents a pound and ask twenty!  Most tire stores either are not aware of these regulations or ignore them.  If you want to stay strictly legal, contact your local EPA office and take their seminar

Tools you will need:

A business card with a sketch of your project to remind the dealer to call you when he fills a bucket.

A reasonably accurate scales capable of 250 pounds or more. We are not weighing in grams here and a pound is only 12 cents worth.  In fact, I always round up to the next 10 pounds when settling up.  That lets the store owner know that you are dealing fairly.  I used an old balance type bathroom scale that looks like the one in a doctor's office. 

A hand truck helps move those heavy buckets to your pickup.

A short handled, garden spade type flat shovel.  When you hit one of those grease drums, you will have to tip it over and put the weights in buckets to weigh and handle them.

Where to find them

You have to cultivate a "lead farm". Don't get discouraged on your first couple of rounds.  You will be very lucky to find 300 pounds the first round. After a few trips, you will find five or six stores that will sell to you.  Then it is a simple matter of making a run to these stores every three months.

The typical neighborhood tire store will accumulate about 50 pounds of used weights in a month.  A major franchise, like Goodyear, in a good location will accumulate about 150 pounds in the same period.  When visiting small shop, ask for the owner.  He is the only one who can give a straight answer.  At a big tire store, don't go into the office. Go to the service writer's desk and ask for the shop foreman.  Try to build a good relationship with your contact.  Explain what you are doing. Show him some pictures or the plans.  There are a lot of people collecting weights for fishing and shooting.  You want him to buy into your project and sell exclusively to you for the next year or so.

Tire dealers have different philosophies about used wheel weights. The penny wise, pound-foolish ones seeing the $2/pound that they pay for new weights sort and reuse them. On average, a worker can clean and sort about 3 pounds an hour, so if he is making minimum wage, it is a loosing proposition. You will never convince him of this, so don't try!

Some stores sell them back to the distributor that sells them tire weights.  Payment is generally in the form of a discount off the regular price of the new weights so these dealers really can't tell you what they are getting for them.

Some store owners will ask exorbitant prices like 20 cents/pound.  If you run into one of these, ask him how much he has. He will probably be sitting on 7 or 8 buckets. Just grin and let him keep sitting.  Hopefully he will develop a set of hemorrhoids.

Some shops just throw them away! Give this guy a five-gallon bucket with your name and phone number on it and offer him 12 cents a pound!  He will call in about three months.

Among all of these you will find a few stores that are very willing to work with you.  These are the ones you want to cultivate. Remember you are providing these stores a service. They are your customers. Make regular runs, keep them informed of your progress, and treat them fairly!

I was fortunate in having a homemade crucible furnace that I used for bronze castings. I added a derrick over it with a hydraulic jack to handle a heavy crucible.  An engine hoist would do the same thing.  The melting pot is a piece of 8" steel pipe with a plate welded over the bottom. A pair of lugs were welded to the sides to receive a yoke that connects to the hoist. 

You don't have to get that elaborate.  A propane fish cooker will work fine for batches up to 75 pounds. DO NOT USE THE POT FOR COOKING EVER AGAIN!

I use a commercial chef's strainer to remove the clips and dross and a 36" piece of ½" steel rod as a stirrer and a pair of welder's gloves and a face shield are a must.  If you use a fish cooker, you will need another 36" rod for lifting the pot off the burner and a crucible pourer.  This is two parallel  rods with a ring that the pot will sit in welded between.

Start the burner with a full pot of weights. As the bottom weights melt the level will drop.  Add more weights. Try to add weights before the top layer melts. You want them to heat up and drive off any moisture or oil before they hit the molten lead. Moisture will cause an explosion! 

It will probably take 6 or eight topping offs before the pot is full.  Keep adding weights until you can see molten lead about two weights below the top weight.  .Now push the top layer of weights under and stir slowly.  Stand back as you stir! The clips will start rising to the top and will overflow the pot.  Dip out the clips and skim off the dross.  This is not a pleasant phase of the job.  As the clips rise, they bring with them any remaining rubber, oil and trash.  The pot will be smoking pretty heavily. This is obnoxious stuff.  I use a fan to blow the smoke away from my side of the pot.

Don't let the lead cook to long. as it gets much above the 770F melting point some lead vapors can develope.  You don't want that.

Now you will need a helper.  Run the lifting rod through the pot handle and lift the pot off the burner. Place it in the pouring ring and you are ready to pour the lead into the molds.  As the molds cool, start the next batch. 

The molds will require about 20 minutes to get good and solid. DO NOT DUMP THE MOLDS BEFORE YOU ARE SURE THEY ARE WELL SET.  If your next pot gets ready before the molds are good and solid, you can LIGHTLY spray them with water using a garden sprayer. DO NOT SOAK. Any moisture remaining in the mold will cause an explosion of molten lead on the next batch!

The recycler will supply their lead in 60 pound pigs.  The required ratio is 8 to 1. When making the big pour, you will need to add 1 of their 60 pound pigs for every 19 of your 25 pound pigs.

The Final cost

When you are finished with this effort, you will have about 22 cents a pound invested including the shipping and melting.  If you bought new pure lead and antimony to alloy it, you would probably have spent 80 cents a pound at a minimum. For an 8,600 pound keel, $5,000 is pretty good pay for about 80 hours of common labor.