This lead is the "bomb"

[foesgth]

A buddy of mine brought these over to me. He found them when helping a friend clean out his shop. Any of you folks ever seen a lead bomb? The big one is 100lbs and the small one is 50. It seems to be fairly hard when I give a poke with a scratch awl. I'll be able to check it as soon as I finish my toy microscope mod on my Lee tester(you need to be careful about reading posts around here, it can take up all you time).

175439

[Bodean98]

Downrigger weights for DEEP fishing?

[JSnover]

Downrigger weights for DEEP fishing?
Good chance. The small inert bombs I remember were iron, painted blue, and had a different mount system.

[Hickory]

If they blow up when you melt them, they are the bomb.

[lightman]

I've seen brass gismos that looked like those that the Corps of Engineers used for testing water flow or some such thing with. The brass ones weighed about 30 or 35#. Nice Score!

[Bzcraig]

Downrigger weights for DEEP fishing?

This would be my guess.......

[Vinne]

Nice "catch".

[Pumpkinheaver]

Downrigger weights for DEEP fishing?

Exactly what I thought when I saw them.

[michael.birdsley]

Downrigger weights for DEEP fishing?

The cannon balls we use on the Great Lakes range from 8-12lbs. Ours on our boat are 10 lbers. We can get down to aprrox 150 ft with them. You would need a anchor winch to to put them down or bring them up.


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[6622729]

That's likely fishing gear. We have a proving grounds near here. I have been in the plant where a contractor made those blue practice bombs. They're steel, much larger and nothing like those lead "bombs". Cool to see none the less. They're going to make a lot of boolits if they don't have some special value in their current form.

[MaryB]

Net weights for trawler fishing?

[Ballistics in Scotland]

I think they are weights to tow dragnets or instruments at great depth, for some scientific purpose, or possibly minesweeping.

I can't believe they are inert bombs, because the air force would want to recover those, particularly if made of such an expensive metal. Lead would be more likely to sink deep into soft earth, or to be knocked out of shape on anything hard. Besides, the idea is to come close to the aerodynamic properties of an explosive-filled bomb, and iron would come closer.

As has been said, ball weights are usually fine for fishing, and these are much heavier. I doubt if any fish species at extreme depth is worth trolling for at speed, and the slot and pin suggests that speed was intended. Otherwise why not just use a round eyebolt?

[gwpercle]

There appear to be three fins, the upright fin looks larger than the other two ....if they were aerial practice bombs they should have four of equal size, body usually of steel not of lead. And notice the "bombs" are two different sizes !

Have discovered what they are . They are called Current Meter Weight or Sounding Weight. They are attached to the bottom arm of a Current Meter and the meter measures the flow of a moving body of water, river, stream, etc .
I found a current one for sale, This is a new weight from a company that sells this type of equipment .....a 15 pound weight sells for $313.00 !

These might be from the 1950's to 1990's just by appearance. The slot in the top is where the meter arm is inserted. Some are also made of brass but most seem to be of lead.

If a 15 pounder goes for over $300.00 you might want to rethink melting that bad boy down....might be worth a lot more as a sounding weight !
List the smaller one on Ebay as a rare vintage sounding weight for $500 and see what happens !
Gary

[Ballistics in Scotland]

I doubt if that kind of meter is in use any more, and unlike a lot of obsolete machinery, nobody collects current meters. If they do, what could go wrong with the weights that came with it? I think the best these can hope for is being turned into bullets.