WW weight

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  • Last Post 20 August 2009
762 shooter posted this 21 March 2009

Anybody have a ballpark guess on the weight of a five gallon plastic bucket full of wheel weights?

Inquiring minds want to know.

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rbdave posted this 21 March 2009

guessing around 120# plus or minus

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hunterspistol posted this 22 March 2009

No real estimates, some 5 gallon buckets are only 4 gallon. Count on as much as 200 pounds though, no use getting a backache!

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Nora posted this 22 March 2009

I haven't put a bucket on a scale after bringing it home. But an actual 5 gallon bucket 3/4 full has regularly yielded 110-120, 1 lb. ingots for me using an RCBS ingot mold.

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Ed Harris posted this 23 March 2009

I fill buckets no more than half-full by approximate visual inspection, whether they are back-stop lead or wheelweights. Average weight is about 80 pounds, as more than this is too much to lift without help and average yield is about 60-65 pounds of ingots after you melt and skim off all the junk. In the case of range lead, it takes four buckets of range scrap to fill one bucket of jackets, which gets you about $50 at the scrap yard, enough to pay for the propane used to melt it all.

73 de KE4SKY In Home Mix We Trust From the Home of Ed's Red in "Almost Heaven" West Virginia

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runfiverun posted this 23 March 2009

i always figured that a 5 gal bucket weighed 160 lbs average and i got 80% return after sorting it out and smelting down.

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762 shooter posted this 23 March 2009

Thanks,

I just got done with 3 buckets and I was guessing at about 120 net per bucket.

I had these WW for about 15 years and decided it was time for them to become bullets.

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codarnall posted this 10 April 2009

5 X  8 lbs/gal x 11 spg. -20% for air gaps.   so about 400#

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CB posted this 11 April 2009

762 shooter

The last ww I got from a tire shop weighed 102#. The bucket was about 60% full. That would make a full 5 gal bucket weigh about 170 #. Nobody in their right mind would fill a 5 gallon bucket. You wouldn't be able to deal with it. With tire shops using more zinc weights you get less and less lead out of your bucket. I got 65# out of my 102# bucket.

Stephen Perry

Angeles BR:fire

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codarnall posted this 11 April 2009

Let's see now the specific gravity of lead is 11.34. That's 11.34 times the same volume of water. Water weighs 8.3 lb/gal therefore this is a hard one now, that 472 lbs. if it were 5 gals of solid lead. But is not there's air lots of it who knows. A swag of 20% possible more that 94 lbs. So 472 - 94 is not to far off 400#. Charlie

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KenK posted this 11 April 2009

A true five gallon bucket full to the brim with wheel weights does not weigh anywhere close to 400 pounds.

I bought several last year and they were full or even slightly mounded over at the top.  Me and a guy (older than me) at the tire shop lifted them into the back of my truck together.  My wife and I lifted them off in a controlled drop.

A bucket so filled, with minimal trash, will yield about 120 pounds of ingots and less than fifty pounds of clips.

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72coupe posted this 07 June 2009

Last month I bought 2 X 3 gallon buckets of wheel weights from a tire shop. Together they weighed 198 pounds. They netted 165 pounds of clean ingots.

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WILDCATT posted this 18 June 2009

back stop lead in  bucket will tear the bale off.at my club up north I regularly filled the buckets 2/3 full any more and it would tear the bale out.backstop lead is heavy and compac.WW should give 120lb 2/3 full. I had a railroad scale.Since the backstop at last

cleaning gave 26,000 lb it needed regular cleaning.even with the reloading room casting we could not keep up. 

120 lb plus 50 lb clips is min 170 lb.YES??

full bucket of backstop would run ove 300 lb by weight.

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Seabee posted this 24 July 2009

I picked up 2 full to the top 5 gal buckets today. 185 lbs and 193 lbs I paid 20$ EACH.

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CB posted this 25 July 2009

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Johnny Breedlove posted this 07 August 2009

Being an Ex tanker driver for Chevron and picking up buckets of WW for 26 years and selling some of them so as to have extra money to buy realoading supplies. If you weigh them on a bath scale they will allways weigh 30 to 50# more than on a certified scale. Most of the buckets I sold weighed between 130 and 150#. I could dead weight lift a buctet into the cab of a Cabover truck, If they weighed 180+# I don't think I could have picked a bucket up and put it in the cab of my truck. The floor of the cab is about chest high or about 10” under my chin. I'm 6' 3” tall. Thats a tough lift even for 150#.

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buffalord posted this 20 August 2009

I have never used range scrap except in pistol bullets many years ago.  Do you use as is or do you check hardnes and work from there.  I may start using it as ww are getting harder to get I think me and my shooting partner have close to 500 or 600 #  But that wont last long.

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Hammer posted this 20 August 2009

Just weighed one the other day for my own education and it topped the scale at 145 lbs....  I filled it up ON the scale.....

 

P.S.  Don't tell my wife where her scale went....

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tturner53 posted this 20 August 2009

Found a bucket of ww two days ago at a recycler. Their scale said 164 lbs. including the bucket, filled about 3” down from the top. Just poking at the top I found two full rolls of solder in the bucket. After the warning about razor blades in the ww's I'm a little more cautious now. They have a block of what I think is pure lead that's long enough to span the top of a 50 gal. drum, about 16” wide by maybe 5” thick. If I go back to get it they'll load it in my truck with a forklift, but I don't think I can get it back out. They want .30 cents a lb. If somethin' happens to me my wife is going to be the lead queen. Lucky girl, I told her I'd take care of her.

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