Lead Ballast Alternatives

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alandav123

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Hi all
My boat a 14 tonne (MFV wooden ex fishing boat) including ballast has 3 tonne ballast much of it lead ingot and Im thinking of selling the lead as leads £900 per tonne. Shes out on land getting lots doen so nows the time to do it.

Looking at alternatives to the lead such as granite blocks, staffordshire blue bricks, old chain, etc any other issues that I should be aware of?

The lead ingots are mixed with cast lumps, sash window weights, and its starting to get a bit frothy so the idea of a complete clearout and starting with nice clean blocks is appealing.

I did write a very lengthy version of this post but when I tried to post it the thing froze and I lost the post, this is a more concise version.

Regards Alan
 
There's an inshore, open 24 foot fishing boat (pots) that's lying just along the pontoon. I was talking about ballast to her owner just a couple of days ago, and he has some commercial grade heavy duty black plastic sacks filled with steel punchings. The sacks look to be about 1 CWT (Hundredweight) in old money. They're sealed and he doesn't seem to suffer from rust problems, and that's an open boat with them laying just under the deck boards.
They seem to have bedded down nicely and he's screwed some battens over them to keep them in place.
Not sure of the price of scrap steel now though...:)
 
alandav123 said:
Hi all
My boat a 14 tonne (MFV wooden ex fishing boat) including ballast has 3 tonne ballast much of it lead ingot and Im thinking of selling the lead as leads £900 per tonne. Shes out on land getting lots doen so nows the time to do it.

Looking at alternatives to the lead such as granite blocks, staffordshire blue bricks, old chain, etc any other issues that I should be aware of?

The lead ingots are mixed with cast lumps, sash window weights, and its starting to get a bit frothy so the idea of a complete clearout and starting with nice clean blocks is appealing.

I did write a very lengthy version of this post but when I tried to post it the thing froze and I lost the post, this is a more concise version.

Regards Alan
Click to expand...
How much space have you got. Replacing lead with steel will require 42% greater volume, with dense brick/concrete 450% greater volume, to get the same weight.
 
I would keep the lead.
My previous boat had about 175 Kg of cast iron ingots in the bilges.
It was filthy in there with rust scale forming a sludge blocking up limber holes in the frames.
Eventually I bit the bullet and pulled it all out, chipped the rust and treated the ingots with Dynatrol. Another filthy job.

IMAG0039.jpg


I did look into replacing the iron with lead but at the time the wholesale price of lead was £1300 a tonne. What I did have was two 14 Kg lead ingots and some scrap which I cast into a 5kg lump ... so I was able to dump more than a dozen iron ingots. The space it freed was significant and I was able to load the ballast away from limber holes.
The moral? Lead is realtively clean and small in volume.
Before anyone jumps in, weights used in car wheel balancing are not lead any more and are kept for recycling.
Been there.
 
I reckon doing a decent job with any other material will serious eat into the scrap value of the lead.
 
Sand bags, 25kg from builder's merchant or cheaper if you buy 1 ton dumpy bags (about £12 a ton?) and rebag it yourself, double bag it anyway. Obviously more volume than lead, but settles in nicely, no rust, but tend to trap water. You can stow it up into the turn of the bilge where it will be more effective against rolling. However, have a rough guess at how big a space you need for 120x25kg bags.
 
fisherman said:
Sand bags, 25kg from builder's merchant or cheaper if you buy 1 ton dumpy bags (about £12 a ton?) and rebag it yourself, double bag it anyway. Obviously more volume than lead, but settles in nicely, no rust, but tend to trap water. You can stow it up into the turn of the bilge where it will be more effective against rolling. However, have a rough guess at how big a space you need for 120x25kg bags.
Click to expand...

How much will that raise the centre of gravity?
Lead has always been expensive, if sand was the right answer, wouldn't the original builder have made that choice?

Is trapping water between the plastic bags and the wooden hull going to cause potential rot problems?

Good point that moving the ballast outwards can modify the roll characteristics, making the boat roll slower.
 
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