Worn-out SCUBA-diving weight belt

[TFoley]

found its way into my reloading shed a couple of months back, courtesy of an acquaintance who had a great time [along with his son] at a recent guest day, and donated it to me as a thank-you. And before anybody me takes to task about how a weight-belt can wear out, it appears that constant immersion in salt water over a period of years play gip with the stitching.

Anyhow, half an hour work with mrs tac's unpicking device and I was the proud owner of about 45 pounds of mixed-grade/size lead shot. Melting it down resulted in some pretty gruesome and plentiful dross, but once that was skimmed off, what beautiful shiny lead was there for the casting!

The bullets - 535gr Miniés for my Musketoon and 450gr FNL .45-70 Govt for my Winchester High Wall - came out sharply filling the moulds and of very uniform shininess. Even chilling the 405s straight from the mould into a pail of water didn't change the colour, just seemed to make them very smooth and professional-looking. A couple of hundred .457" RB for my ROA followed, and loads still left.

My experience with this freebie has pointed me in future at any dive shop where old gear might be found - in particular weight-belts with shot, rather than the clip-on lumps of lead one often sees.

tac

 

[Lonegun1894]

Good tip. Thank you very much!

 

[Stumpkiller]

I found a weight belt on (below) Seneca Lake that was three of the old solid 10 lb "Buckle" shapes and a few 2 pound cylinders. That was some of best lead I've ever used.

 

[TFoley]

Post-script to my post -

Check the actual hardness of the finished bullet - I did and tossed the Miniés I'd made back into the pot. Fine for .45-70 Govt bullets though [with apologies for mentioning a c*r*r*d*e-type rifle], they were just right hardness for that particular use.

Seems that not all lead belt weights are actually lead as we know it, Jim. :redface:

tac

 

[swathdiver]

That's a great "thank you"!

Many of today's lead weights for diving are made the same way modern sailboat keels and fishing weights are made, from a hodge podge of metals.

Just be careful.

I'm done diving and have several hundred pounds of diving lead, much of it picked up from Davy Jones' locker but won't use it until I get around to picking up the Lee Lead Hardness Tester.

 

[Old Creek]

good info, I have quite a bit of diving weights packed away, both shot bags and belt weights and was reluctant to use it, I'll keep this in mind.

creek

 

[Black Jaque Janaviac]

Yes. It pains me to think of guys using pure plumber's lead to cast fishing jigs! I'll trade ya mixed lead for the pure stuff!!!!

 

[mooman76]

You have to be careful when melting diving weights. I put one in my pot slowly the other day and the lead started bubbling like it was boiling(but I know it wasn't boiling) and I knew something was wrong so I stepped back and none too soon. 10# of lead melt exploded all over my workbench.
I thought maybe it was the temperature difference in my cold garage(45 degrees) but it wasn't really that cold. I know the lead was dry. I've had it for a few years and been sitting on my workbench for 6 months.
I posted this on the castboolits forum and some say because the lead wasn't preheated but others claim that the diving weights from the pressure of deep diving will force water into micro pours. Anyway just posting this for people to be careful. A good way to melt questionable lead is to put it in the pot before you turn it on so as it heats up it will dry out the lead.

 

[Twisted_1in66]

That bit about forcing saltwater inside micropores might be correct. At sea level you are under 14.7-lbs per square inch pressure. At 30-feet you are under 29.4-lbs. That just doubled the pressure. At 60-ft, you are under 44.1-lbs. Each additional 30-ft will add 14.7-lbs. Another way to look at it from a diver's perspective is you are under one atmosphere pressure at sea level, 2 atmosphere's pressure at 30-ft, 3 atmospheres at 60-ft, 4 at 90-ft., 5 at 120-ft., etc.

Now sport-diving is normally done around 30 to 35 or 40 feet of depth because that's were most of the life is underwater. At 30-feet, you have half as much air in your tank as you do at the surface because you have twice the pressure on it. So expect to spend about 30-minutes. Good news is you can spend up to 310-minutes at 30-feet without having to worry about the bends. As long as you're just using a single tank, it's hard to spend enough time underwater to be dangerous.

Then it's back up to the boat for a fresh tank or a fill-up and back down you go. When I used to dive years ago I would typically get 3 to 4 dives in a day's outing. Although that might not sound like much, it is really a full day of diving. And gas at two atmospheres goes into suspension twice as fast as it does at the surface. So, if there are any micro-pores in the lead, it's very probable that they will have water in them.

Perhaps trying to dry them out in the oven for a few hours "might" get rid of it? I would expect most of the problem to be near the surface and perhaps scrapping off the surface might get rid of the problem.

Twisted_1in66 :thumbsup:
Dan

 

[mooman76]

That oven idea sounds like a winner. I didn't think of that. I have an old toaster oven in the garage for backing on paint so that would be ideal. Would work also to preheat lead for the pot.

 

[Marc Adamchek]

I very recently sold my family house and am still going through everything I had to move out of there. Anyway, I spent a good part of the '60's scuba diving and was elated to come across about 20 lbs of weights (some spare ones in there). I told my wife that the amount of lead was much purer than what they're using today. She flipped her eyes up like she always does when she learns of yet another weird reasoning behind my weird interests and pastimes.

 

[cynthialee]

I very recently sold my family house and am still going through everything I had to move out of there. Anyway, I spent a good part of the '60's scuba diving and was elated to come across about 20 lbs of weights (some spare ones in there). I told my wife that the amount of lead was much purer than what they're using today. She flipped her eyes up like she always does when she learns of yet another weird reasoning behind my weird interests and pastimes.

I get that look from my better half allot, for the same reasons.
:thumbsup:

 

[mooman76]

Me too but I give her the look every time she buys more craft stuff. :haha:

 

[FishDFly]

Okay with the difference in specific gravity, how does water penetrate lead????

If water penetrated the lead, a neural point would be reached and the lead would belt would not work.


If water was able to penetrate lead, when the temperature of the water reaches 212, the water expands to 1220 psi and your oven would explode in your house.

Huh, need some chemistry lessons here, my old fishing weights keep sinking from my Grandfather for some reason after many years.

When should they start floating?????????????

 

[swathdiver]

I had a couple of bars of lead sitting next to the screen on the porch. It's been raining but the bars were dry when I dropped them into the Lee 4-20. Then they sunk and started all manner of bubbling. Learned that them mixed poly cotton shirts light up right quick and that my hair ain't thick enough to keep a drop o lead from hitting my scalp anymore! Ouch! :shake:

But after extracting that lead from my scalp and a new shirt, 195 .530 round ball and 167 Kaido 240 grain sixgun conicals cast up real nice. Such was soured only a little bit shortly after when a jar slipped out of my tallow covered fingers and exploded all over the kitchen floor while I was mixing up a fresh batch of US Army 1855 Conical Lube. :idunno:

I'm so glad my wife and kids love me as much as they do and are so forgiving! :wink:

 

[MC One Shot]

As a Tech diver I have found lots of dive weights and have used dive weights for casting, I use a small torch to melt these weights into the pot to prevent any eruptions in the pot. I had that occur about 35 years ago and have been using a torch since then. Fortunately I had walked away from the pot for something when it occurred but there was lead every where. A hell of a mess to clean up. BTW a lot of dive weight as of the last 20 years or so are made from wheel weights which also include zinc and other unknown lead alloy scraps. Weights with major dive equipment manufactures names on them are generally lead nondescript weights I consider as unknown lead alloys.

 

[CrackStock]

What is funny about this is that I use old bullets to cast dive weights. I dig them out and melt them down into the mold for dive weights because I am not sure of their lead purity and figure that they are not good for anything else.

CS

 

[MC One Shot]

What is funny about this is that I use old bullets to cast dive weights. I dig them out and melt them down into the mold for dive weights because I am not sure of their lead purity and figure that they are not good for anything else.

CS

LOL.... I did the same 5 years ago for a weight for a new set of doubles.

 

[nhmoose]

In the last 20 years my weights have been lead shot with a quick pull release on my tank harness.

Weight belts were frowned on in my dept. To many chances in the heat of the moment to put it on under the tank harness.

Most of the Recreational shops used the free WW for their weights. Profit margin was way higher.