Simple ballast for day boat?

I have a Memory 19 gaff rigger and for ballast pigs I packed lengths of 1/4" mild steel reinforcement bar into square section plastic gutter downpipe cut to length to suit. The ends were sealed with CT1 and plastic end caps. Reasonably cheap and clean and can be manhandled.
 
Some sailing dayboats also use water ballast - it would be ideal if you could rig up some sort of pump arrangement to pump it in and out with no need for holes in the hull, and then it wouldn't add to the weight when it's out of the water.
 
I made a 170kg keel for my mini keel boat (16ft open deck) 2020-2021, I'd been collecting lead for years.
One thing I can say is modern lead acid battery's tend to have a lot less lead in them than they used to, the plates appear to be a hard metal covered in a thin layer of lead, or with lead held in a mesh. Old sash weights are sometimes lead, I had a few of them, but most were cast iron so they are reserved for correcting the balance of the motorboat.

Most of my lead came from an old military battery servicing bay and the benches had been covered in lead, they were being scrapped, yes please I said.. Nearly a 1/4 inch thick sheets.. I did however run out of lead and due to covid had to buy from ebay the last 10Kg, as the local scrappies were closed.

As for the mould, I made an aerofoil out of foam, it's about 3ft long and six inches at most wide and deep, fibreglassed that up, dug out the foam, lined it with lead sheet.. Then poured in the lead slowly a bit at a time.. The heat being spread by the lead there was very little burning.

It was then through bolted to the bottom of the stub keel on the bench, and the whole lot fibreglassed over several times,

Oh Drilling lead is fun... too fast and it melts grabs the drill bit and then I moved, as the keel is heavier than me.. Hurt the hands and lower arms somewhat as I was using a hefty drill..
 
Course, you could do what Luke Powell did at Gweek: buy a huge lead ingot and take the electric planer to it. Don't know how he collected the shavings. External ballast, to be fair.
 
On casting ally, a styrofoam pattern can be made, then tamped down in the sand and the ally poured straight in. The foam vaporizes . This could be used for lead, but not tried it. Casting ballast to be bolted to the side of a wooden keel, I just closed one end of a bit of RSJ and had a sliding dam to make them different lengths. Worked a treat.
 
just don't breath in while you're doing it.
(yes I was fully masked up etc when pouring my lead, but burning polystyrene as well? a really toxic mixture..
 
Colvic Watson said:
There's an internal keel channel in the bottom of our Falmouth Bass Boat. I want to put in about 75kg of ballast to increase the stability - what's the cheapest and what's the easiest? Ideally once it's in we'd glass over it.
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Havn't you got a mother in law ? ?
 
The Q said:
just don't breath in while you're doing it.
(yes I was fully masked up etc when pouring my lead, but burning polystyrene as well? a really toxic mixture..
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"the casting of lead weights for fishing. The home manufacture of fishing sinkers is not recommended as it is a common cause of lead poisoning. The hazard occurs when the lead is melted down and poured into moulds. It is at this stage that toxic lead fumes are produced and can be inhaled and absorbed."

Lead in recreational activities - DAWE
 
DownWest said:
I have a pile of wheel weights, but I understand that they are now often not lead
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I've just read online that the EU banned the use of lead in wheel weights in 2005.

Apparently some are zinc, given the ability of zinc to dezincify from brasses I'm not feeling the love for using wheel weights in my keel.
 
NUTMEG said:
My 14' Lune Pilot uses 75kgms of sand, in plastic sandbags from eBay. As said, cheap but messy. Dylan's suggestion of using gravel has merit I think.

I got fed up with sand and asked around the yard if anyone had any lead. Did not have to ask many people before I found two with spare ballast. I now have about 90kgms of lead ballast that I hope to cast into suitable sized ingots.

Steve
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A friend had 1000kg of lead in his bilges on a home built plywood boat. The lead had been cast in aluminium beer cans. The cans were simply stripped off the lead once set. The lead was then just placed in the bilge. It worked very well. He crossed the Atlantic twice and a big chunk of the Pacific with that set up. The lead was easily moved and ballast adjusted
 
burgundyben said:
I've just read online that the EU banned the use of lead in wheel weights in 2005.

Apparently some are zinc, given the ability of zinc to dezincify from brasses I'm not feeling the love for using wheel weights in my keel.
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I bought a lot of wheel weights and melted them down. If I was just a bit careful the zinc weights did not melt. (Maybe some did to form solder) Of course the iron weights did not melt

Lead/Melting point
327.5 °C
Zinc/Melting point
419.5 °C
Iron/Melting point
1,538 °C

"Europe (EEC) banned the use of lead in wheel balancing weights in 2005 and the Japanese car manufacturers have stopped using it for nearly a decade. Today nearly all cars sold in North America arrive from the factory with lead free wheel weights installed. "
 
A friend back in the late 90's collected thousands of old wheel weights, then got 5 ltr oil cans cut the top off, and buried them in the sand then poured the lead in.. The flame was quite spectacular as the oil coating the inside of the cans burnt off. He needed quite a few of these ingots to put in the keel of his 30ft cruiser
 
If anyone wants a pile of heavy, rusty, old chain (quite a big link size) for use as ballast PM me. Free, near Chichester.
 
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