Diver's weights?

[mechanic]

I was given a bucket full of what I believe to be the weights from a diver's belt.  All are cast with slots and marked for weight.  Hoping someone here has knowledge of what these are made of.  They are much harder than pure lead, but obviously have lead as their main component.

Thanks in advance.

Ben

[haroldclark]

Hey, Mechanic

I have a guy offering me a stack of Divers weights too.  I'm going to melt them and cast a few test bullets to run through my Saeco Hardness Tester and go from there.  I don't have them yet.

I wouldn't be surprised if they are cast from WWs.  Could be pure lead, as well.

[tn_junk]

I used a few last year. They were extremely dirty, smelled foul, required a lot of heat to melt, had to be fluxed several times-- but made some really nice bullets for my .460 S&W Magnum. They were harder than Lyman #2, but not nearly as hard as linotype.
My guess is that it will depend entirely on what you've got in your batch. Since the only important thing is weight, I would bet that about every batch is different. Poured from whatever alloy is at hand and cheapest.

alan

[blhof]

As a diver that cast my own wts.; I can tell you that we(divers) cast with whatever we can melt, ww's, recovered sinkers and roofing lead.  No care is taken as to consistancy and if a 5# wt is 4.8# that's close enough.  Your best bet is to hardness test each batch as I do with my own wts, since I switched to soft wts; lead shot in plastic screen bags.  Thank goodness I bought 100+ lbs of 6 shot, when shot was cheap, for making my own soft wts.

[mechanic]

Threw a weight marked 5# in the pot and brought it to heat.  I don't know whats in it, but its NASTY.  By the time I got through fluxing and cleaning I probably had 3# of lead.  I'll save the rest of this until I'm desperate.  I've already got plenty of pure lead.

[Lloyd Smale]

could be anything. Most likely wws, its the most common lead we come accross.

[haroldclark]

4/24/09
I melted down over 60 pounds of Divers weights today.  The guys are right about it being dirty and it had some had debris that burned off, but the metal melted quite nicely.  I thought the metal might be wheel weights, but it is too soft for most Wheel Weights

Wheel Weights run around 9 on the Brinell scale of hardness (BNH).

The Diver's weights measured 7 on the BNH scale. 

I can mix that with Linotype (22 BNH) and come up with a nice rifle bullet metal.

I didn't lose any actual metal at all.  There was some typical debris from wheel weights that looks sort of like burned off charcoal, but only a couple of tablespoons of that per 20 pound pot of melt.  So, all in all, I got the weights for free and I have over 60 pounds of metal.  I will mix it with Linotype to bring it up to between 10 and 14 BNH.  If I mix a 50 50 mix of the metal and Linotype, I will end up with a BNH of 14.5.

However, I shoot most of my cast rifle bullets at a hardness of 10 to 12 BNH up to 2000 fps with no problems and no leading what so ever.

I cast some 38 special wadcutters to use as testing media.  The bullets were coming out of the Saeco #48 mold very nicely in several warm up casts.  This material would be suitable for low velocity handgun bullets without anything added. 

Just a side note:  Midsouth Shooter's supply notified me today that my order of 6,000 30 caliber gas checks was shipped yesterday.  They have them in stock for the moment. Better hurry if you want any to be left.

Happy Casting, boys

Harold Clark