bullets

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Not really. You can flux the heck out of it, but with home equipment, you'll never get it all out. Better to start with lead as pure as you can get it.
 
It still won't be 100% soft like you want. But you can dilute it with soft lead, that seems to work for me just fine. I found that the salvage yard a few towns over sells soft lead for $1 a pound, but it's good because unless I make shot from it I can re-use the rounds I find in the berm. Airgun lead is pretty soft, almost pure lead, I just bought an airgun for cheap backyard plinkin' and for killin' pests. I also have an airgun pellet trap and a berm I set up that should return a fair amount of lead to me. That's good because I shoot and then get free ammo for the rest of my guns (sept for the pellet gun and rimfires.) Another good way to get soft lead is from jacketed bullets, the copper jackets have soft lead inside, you need to break open the FMJ ammo with an axe, the cast bullet are generally hard, rimfire is medium hard but will work for anything but Minnie balls, those should be dead soft. For buckshot it doesn't matter much, patched or saboted projectiles could be harder if you need to get rid of the hard stuff. That's what I do, it works just fine. Anyway, that's all I have to say about that.

~Levi
 
But can't wheel weights be melted and the other metals skimmed off?
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No. Any lead alloy, like wheel weights will contain other metals. Once different metals have been melted to form a new alloy they cannot be separated again with home equipment. Impurities,like dirt will rise to the surface, and so will the clips the weights are held on with. But you cannot separate the metals in the alloy at home.
 
In the real world you can get the tin and other out of wheel weights to a degree that will work. I have been using them for over 35 years and they work just fine. The bottom line is if you can cast a ball that you can scrape up a line in with a finger nail it will work and most wheel weights will do that if you flux out the odd stuff that is in them.
 
Word is that the stick-on wheelweights are softer than the clip-on type. Better to start with those. Alternatively, Rotometals sells good pure lead for, last time I checked, about 2 dollars a pound, with free shipping on a reasonable sized order - still a lot cheaper than buying factory lead balls. Cheaper yet if you buy a whole lot.

I've also gotten some good lead from plumbing shops as indicated above, but depending on where you live (the age of the buildings is the issue) the plumber's lead may be getting scarce, as it's no longer used in plumbing much if at all.
 
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