Reply With QuoteI personally wouldn't use shot to pour jigs unless it was an emergency, it's way to expensive. Several years ago I bought some roof flashings that were used on plumbing vents. It has to be cleaned up but works great.
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Crappie.com Legend
Check with your tire store for a bucket of wheel weights. Separate the trash, stick ons, clip ons, scrap metal and zinc. Zinc wheel weights will have ZN on them, most of the time. Lead stick ons will be a medium to dark gray color. Melt the stick ons separate from the clip ons into ingots and labeled. Hold the heat between 650 and 700, if zinc gets in the melt it will float, it melts at 728. I pour the melt onto an aluminum baker's sheet as silver dollar size and cornbread sticks of 1 lb each. Easier to mix for the hardness I want. A thermometer is your best friend. Lyman or RCBS 1,000 degree will cost $40 to $45. A King Kooker 750 degree will cost $10. Collect the scrap, drool and zinc, sell it as scrap to get some of your money back.
Crappie.com 2K Star General
I personally wouldn't use shot to pour jigs unless it was an emergency, it's way to expensive. Several years ago I bought some roof flashings that were used on plumbing vents. It has to be cleaned up but works great.
Crappie.com Legend
Go to a facebook reloading group that lets you sell, not The Reloading Room. Lee Reloading & Casting Equipment Group is good.
Recycled shot goes for $40 and new goes for $50. Offer the shot for a trade for more lead weight than shot weight. Try to get half pure lead and half wheel weights. You will want to melt it at about a 50/50 mix for full cav. fill.
Crappie.com 3K Star General
I guess I'm the oddball here. I use an old cast iron dutch oven and melt my lead in that with it sitting on a fish cooker burner. Bought a ladle off eBay and skim impurities with it and use it to fill my molds.
I use wheel weights for pouring jigs. I pour 1/32 and 1/16 oz jigs primarily and bell sinkers with swivels in them. I do pour some ingots and decoy weights as well. Getting the mold up to temp is a big deal for pouring any of my stuff. I always pour blanks until the molds fill out.
There are some places you can get some good scrap lead, such as flashings or plumbers lead. Usually scrap lead is in a bigger piece and has to be cut down (hence the using of a dutch oven style cast iron pot). I can get a big piece of lead in that. I use the plumbers lead and flashing for my wrap around decoy weights as it is softer lead. The wheel weights are a hard lead but they will pour a jig head for me just fine.
