Keel weight lead?

[motorcycle_dan]

Due to some liberal, don't want to offend the little tyke, child rear'n
http://www.mountvernonnews.com/local/06/06/01/fire.html
So they burn down this big storage place.
Okay that is bad. But there is an up side to all this. Well, up for me anyway.
One of the people I work with had a BIG sail boat. Said sail boat was stored at this facility. The fire completely consumed the sail boat. Leaving behind nothing but ash and a big puddle of LEAD,

Big as in several hunnert pounds.

Anyone know the composition of this type of lead. pure pb?

As for the misguided little tyke? they'll probably shake a finger at him, take away his tv privledges for a week or so.

If'n it were me what done such things, my daddy and I would have both gone to the hospital. Me to get my **** sew'd up and daddy to get his boot back. But them were different days.

[shooter575]

Know of one guy that got offered a keel of a big ol sailboat.He wanted pure pb and this one was hard. He said it was 10' long and weighed way over a ton?My guess is thay are made of what ever lead they can get so it could be whatever.I would grab what ever you can get.You could use it for trading if it aint what you need.

[Pawpaw]

I've been shooting a chunk of keel lead for the last several years. My son dragged it home out of a shipyard. It was about the same dimensions as a 2 x 4, four feet long. He said they laid it between the ribs of boats as ballast. Mine was dead soft. So soft that if you put it on a bench with a foot or more sticking off the edge, when you came back the next day it would be bent, due to gravity. I've still got a bunch of it in ingot form and use it for dead-soft applications.

[August]

It could be anything. The only concern to the boat builder/owner was the amount of weight below the waterline. You might get lucky. The guy at the tire store, yesterday, told me a story about a customer with a sailboat who wanted 700 pounds of used wheel weights for ballast. Greedy cuss.

[fecmech]

Kead bullets in Dallas Tx mentions on his home page that his bullets are cast out of an alloy of 2% tin and 8% antimony due to the availability in his area and that is due to the mfgr of sailboat keels. http://www.keadbullets.com/ So maybe thats what you have. Nick
"The alloy used in KEAD bullets is a 2% tin, 8% antimony mix - very hard and clean. The usual mix is a 2%, 6% alloy. The 2/6 is good for most velocities. With the 2/8, the reloader can push the bullet just a little faster.
Why the 2/8 mix? Here in the Dallas area, that material was used for keels in sailboats and available in tonnage weights. Costs a little more than the 2/6 mix, but makes harder bullets that run well in Glocks - stock Glock barrels. Alloy is currently produced by Lead Products of Houston, Tx. Excellent product, and an analyses sheet is available if the customer requests a copy."

[9.3X62AL]

That would be a good, hard alloy at 90/8/2.

Marie's uncle is just about finished with his sailboat project, and it used about 2300# pounds of lead alloy for the keel ballast. This came from some sort of backyard foundry in a foreign country that will remain nameless--but is close at hand, and where some English is spoken. Neither Marie's uncle nor I saw the place, he bought the stuff on this side of the border. His acquisition of this material is a pretty good story in itself.

The metal was put up in half-meter lengths, in both 2" x 4" and 1" x 4" thicknesses. These were stacked closely on their edges, and once the bulk of the space was filled--these ingots were cut with a circ saw to fit the remaining recesses. I helped him in this part of the boat-building project, and a miserable tiresome chore it was. I did gain about 130# of sawdust and end pieces, though.

The 2 x 4 pieces were probably pure WW metal, based on their BHT rating after smelting (Buckshot Hardness Tester). The 1 x 4 stuff was WW plus what looked like iron filings from beach sand, which floated to the top of the smelt and looked like grainy fur. This stuff--and the smelted sawdust--were kept seperate until their behavior was verified. All good, so these were added to the WW metal ingot supply.

Short answer--that puddle of metal MIGHT be WW metal, or unalloyed lead, or some mystery concoction that only needed to be heavy to do its boat work. Caveat emptor, in other words.

[motorcycle_dan]

Any suggestions on how I can cut this stuff from the cooled puddle to something managable. I'm thinking of a hatchet or ?????

[fecmech]

Use a skill saw with a cardide tipped blade, it will go thru easily. Be sure and wear a respirator type mask so you don't inhale any of the fine lead dust. Saftey goggles would be a good thing. I'd love a find like that. Good luck Nick

[Leftoverdj]

Lead don't chop for beans. I'd use a chainsaw with a junk chain.

[9.3X62AL]

We had no trouble cutting the 2 x 4's with a 7-1/4" circular saw and a metals disk. WEAR A FILTRATION MASK. Assuming it "puddled" on a concrete floor, is it thin enough to lever up one end for saw blade clearance? One other thing--a pile of 300# or 500# of lead alloy is surprisingly small. A 5-gallon bucket 1/3 full of "sawdust" was VERY heavy. You might have more than you think.

[motorcycle_dan]

I know I have "more" than I think. The fire investigation is pretty much over but the EPA shut down the place because of asbestos found in the roof material. Got the whole place plastic wrapped. Waiting on a call back from the boat owner. It was a BIG sail boat. If all works out, I'll never have to bring the boys at the tire shop another pizza during lunch....

[motorcycle_dan]

Went back to check out the boat. Only a small portion of the keel weight went liquid and puddled on the concrete. Most of the rest is still in ingot form. And what did they use for ingots you ask. Great big old stonk'n iron skillit. They are about 14" diameter and 3" thick. Still have the divot where the pour spout is. And man are they heavy. I'll make a bullet or two out of it this weekend and do a hardness check. You all were right. Lead don't cut worth a dang. Tried with a big splitting maul. Made some pretty nice gashes in it but that is all. Took one dummy holding the split'n maul and some other dummy whak'n it with a 30# sledge. Did that to mark a groove about 3/4" deep on both sides while spanning between a couple of 4x4's. Eventually it broke in half. Now it will fit in my ingot making pot.

[Cliff]

Keel Lead in most sail boats is anything which was cheap when the boat was built. Back in the 1980's when the price of lead shot up out of sight for a while I knew some shooters who were also scuba divers. They wanted lead for bullets and belt weights. After checking they found that most all sail boats had lead ballast in their keels. They also found that when a sail boat got struck and sunk by lighting it was usually due to the lighting bolt blowing the keel out, dropping it in place. Anyway they recovered a lot of this lead, some was in ingots, some in form of lead shot and all other sorts of things. Was a lot of work but they figured it was worth it. I know the U.S. Navy used approximately 50,000 pounds of electraliticly pure lead in ingot form bolted in place in the keels of their WWII submarines. Where I worked we had over 180 tons of the stuff, had been reformed mostly in to bricks 2X5X8 inches and weight about 25 pounds each, butter soft. Also had about another 50,000 pounds in original navy ingots. Great stuff. Probably still there. Just rambling on a Saturday morning, Good Luck with you find......

[Goatlips]

And what did they use for ingots you ask. Great big old stonk'n iron skillit. They are about 14" diameter and 3" thick. Still have the divot where the pour spout is.

Dan, perhaps you need another ingot making pot... a 14" big stonk'n iron skillet! :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen:

Goatlips (always tryin' to help)

[imashooter2]

Dan, perhaps you need another ingot making pot... a 14" big stonk'n iron skillet! :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen:

Goatlips (always tryin' to help)

Now that's a solid piece of advice! Beats the crap out of cutting up those ingots.

[Bob S]

A ShipAlt was done on my last ship, the Skinny Tee, in about 1976. The weight and moment compensation required the removal of some of the lead ballast from the forward LFORM JP-5 tanks. The pigs weighed between 60 and 80 pounds each and had been secured to the CVK in the bottom of the tanks with welded-on clips. Several of these found their way to my garage. I'm not certain what the alloy was, but it was soft enough and cast well enough to make excellent round balls and minie balls for the muzzle loaders that I was into at that time. I'm sure they were put there by NASSCO when the ship was built in 1968-69, and the alloy would not have been important, only the total weight. I'm sure NASSCO used the cheapest scrap mush they could find.

("Skinny Tee" = USS SCHENECTADY, LST 1185. There is a film clip on the web somewhere that shows her being blown up as a target a few years ago. You can also see her if you look carefully in the movie "Pearl Harbor", as she was tied up with a few other inactive sisters in Southeast Loch and can be clearly seen in the back ground as the "Japanese torpedo planes" fly over head. That movie absolutely sucked! *Way* too many anachronisms, inaccuracies, and the computer graphics were so obviously "fake". Tora, Tora, Tora, done before computer animation, was much, much better visually and historically. Even my kids agreed, once I got them to sit through the old movie. Rant mode "off", now. :D )

Resp'y,
Bob S.

[motorcycle_dan]

USS SCHENECTADY, LST 1185.

Well Bob I gotta agree with you (dang gator sailor anywayz) The movie Pearl harbor was way out of place in regards to the ships they showed tied to the pier. But it was obvious ONLY to us squidly types.

GSCS(sw) Ret.
Dat's rite, a dad gum, wrench bend'n SNIPE

[Pawpaw]

No w that we've hijacked this thread, you guys have to admit that Pearl Harbor ain't a war movie. It's a love story. True enough, they packaged it so the guys would watch it too, but it is just another chick flick.

[C1PNR]

No w that we've hijacked this thread, you guys have to admit that Pearl Harbor ain't a war movie. It's a love story. True enough, they packaged it so the guys would watch it too, but it is just another chick flick.
Thanks for the warning! I have the movie and have not yet watched it. SWMBO is out of town for a few days and I thought about putting it on this evening. Guess I'll wait until later!

Hmmmm. So what do I watch tonight? Bolero, naw, one of the kids will stop by. I guess I'll watch Cat Ballou!:drinks: