I'm about to barter some lead & block tin for some sash weights at a local scrappie, can anyone point me to a scrap metal price guide, Google is being most uncooperative.
Need prices for 10s of kgs for lead, block tin & cast iron (I think that's what they made the weights from, as opposed to cast steel).
Fred if you want sash weights I have a pile of them and could use the tin !
(De spam my return address)
AWEM
CI weights should not be expensive... add say £5 or at most £10 as an admin. charge to a couple of quid, and you should be given as many as you can carry.
Lead, yes. Block tin, I very, very much doubt it. Lead, maybe - you can still buy lead weights.
Price of lead at scrap merchant (holds finger in air) - £0.3/Kg? Tin probably buys at about £6,500/1,000Kg, I'm assuming it hasn't changed much in the last 20 years, so expect .5 of that. Cast iron? I dunno. Say £40/tonne.
Heh. "tin" being a slang word for cash?
In article , Andrew Mawson writes
Time is of the essence I'm afraid, going to the scrappy 10am tmrw. Just in case tho', where are you, I'm in Glasgow. I'm looking for 3x33lb, 2x27lb &
4x24lb.
Couldn't be much further away - I'm in Bromley in Kent ! n'ere mind eh !
AWEM
That's useful Chris, thanks:
30kg lead £9 2.5kg block tin £8 128kg cast iron weights £5 scrap value + £10 hassle factorLooks like pretty much a straight swap but I'll happily pay him more for being good enough to keep them rather than melt them down. I needed a reference point as this lot from Mighton was going to cost £180 :-!
In article , Andrew Mawson writes
Thanks for the offer tho'.
I have simply no idea why you think it's "block tin", but I will be very interested to find out - as far as I am aware this term relates to a historical form of the mostly purified tin metal.
Why would people use tin for sash weights, when the denser lead, or cheaper iron, was available? As I said above, I'd love to hear more.
Ooooh don't quote me!
That is quite a lot[1]. I've a few big lumps of lead you could have had in the garage, but you're up there, & I ain't. The Mighton ones I ame sure are top quality, cast in an antique mould, finished in the most traditional way, and given a final rubbing down with a chamois-style leather made out of the soft seat-skin of a Building Control Officer that has been boiled in his own fat for a furlong fathom fortnight.
[1] Don't tell your scrap man about it.
No dear, here, have the other end of the stick :-), I _have_ scrap lead & block tin and am looking to barter it for sash weights
Block tin was in common usage up here in gas piping around the turn of the century, softer than lead and a bright finish when scraped, that is what I've got here.
Don't worry, just wanted to check whether the CI value was 10, 50 or
100quid and will act accordingly
I was going to cast my own from scrap lead but time, hassle & danger are all factors, yes I'm sure the Mighton ones will be polished to a fine lustre but not even I have that much eye for detail on something that is that well hidden.
Don't worry.
Lead all depends on what it is. Roofing lead (low alloy) is worth money, clean linotype is worth even more to shooters. Wheel weights, plumbing or dirty lead are barely worth the transport costs and batteries you can't give away.
I know few scrappies who I'd trust to give me a fair price for tin (it's obscure) . However anyone doing castings (that includes me) will give you a much better price (if you're anywhere near Bristol or South Wales, drop me a line).
Cast iron depends on the grade and the volume, but for domestic scrap it's again sqrt (bugger all)
In the end my scrappy didn't have anything close to the sizes of sash weights I needed but he did have a 4m length of 50mm round steel bar (70kg) so it'll be true diy making them up.
The lead was dirty (pipe stuff) and we traded 7quid for my 20kg (~30p/kg) against 12quid for the bar.
They swore blind the block tin was lead so I kept it, very funny as a bloke who saw me unloading the car looked from 20 feet and said, "ah, old BT, don't see that much any more", he had been a gas fitter of old.
Thanks for all the replies.
Wheel weights actually are good for shooters, better than linotype in modern high pressure guns, the extra tin makes it harder, casts truer to size in the mould and doesn't tend to *strip* in the rifling as much so can be driven harder/faster with less leading to clean out after, base melting can still be as issue though....
They're closer to an "ideal" ball alloy, but most would rather start with linotype (a very well-known alloy - 12% antimony, 3-4% tin) and alloy the rest up by mixing it with pure roofing lead. Wheel weights can have all sorts of crap in them, particularly bismuth and cadmium,
Wheel weights are OK for casting balls, but if you're trying to make bullets, esp. Minies, then IMHO you're better off doing your own alloying.
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