Jump to content

Welcome to TheMalibuCrew!

As a guest, you are welcome to poke around and view the majority of the content that we have to offer, but in order to post, search, contact members, and get full use out of the website you will need to Register for an Account. It's free and it's easy, so don't hesitate to join the TheMalibuCrew Family today!

Lead weight


D-GOOSE

Recommended Posts

With all the talk about ballast and adding fat sacs, I have had a few people interested in lead weight and wanted to enlist the help of the crew to find companies that sell lead ballast. I have seen lead bars and pop bags but need your help finding more.

Pop products

I know this is going to spark a debate about how lead will sink your boat and water ballast is neutral weight so I have a

Edit

POP Products Weight Bags are simply tiny steel shot pellets housed in a plastic inner liner and inside a bag made of durable vinyl

Link to comment

Well we have discussed this, but I will want 10 - 15 bags (40lbs each) of the pop products if we can swing something, As far as other products I don't know of any other.

The Video is comical lead or no lead if you weight it properly and use your head you won't ever have to worry about that. How often do you have a full boat crew. If you do and you have a bunch of lead weight don't fill the ballast! Common since.

Link to comment

I agree NV boarder.

D- Goose, I think Pop is the only show in town. I have heard of people obtaining lead from tire shops and melting it down themselves, but not of any other actual non-water based ballast companies.

In regards to the sinking issue: If anyone is really that concerned about sinking their boat or questioning whether or not you need the extra weight, they probably don't. Its kind of like the Newbie running 3k in ballast in his new VLX. If he is anywhere under at least the advanced level he is probably just creating bad habits and relying far too much on the wake than proper edging to learn the basics. IMHO lead is the last thing you add to your "setup" and generally the cost/benefit is only their for expert level riders and above; but thats just my opinion. Everyone wants a big wake these days for bragging rights or something.

Link to comment

I have done some reading regarding shot bags. A lot of skeet and trap shooters make their own lead shot very cheap. The big catch is setting up or buying the equipment. The set up runs about $375 for the real gear. Of course, there is always the DIY shot maker, a wakeboarder doesn't need prefectly round shot to weigh their boat down.

Lead is very cheap and sometimes even free.

Link to comment

Woody are you saying or would you say. If a person could buy just the bags, then he could go down to a tire store and pic up used wheel weights for free. Then chop up wheel weights into small pieces to put into the bag?

I'm thinking is may be a good DIY job to save some $$$

Link to comment

When I was riding behind my old 205, weighting the boat without sacrificing space was mucho importante! I had about 600 lbs of lead hidden throughout the boat, and maybe 200 lbs of water in the ski locker. The wake was very good, I'd venture to say almost comparable to my Vride wake today. And we never once swamped the boat, much less sank it.

We picked up 100s of lbs of lead from various tire shops in the Seattle area. This was probably 6 or 7 yrs ago. I've suggested this to numerous people on this & other forums. I don't know if they actually tried it or were just lazy. But responses indicated there might be some kind of hazardous waste issue with tire shops giving away lead now.

Liquidmx, I agree with you to a point. Learning the basics of edging, pop, jump.... or in my case on a foil, edging, dip, jump.... is huge. But a nice big ramp doesn't hurt at all. There is a point where it's diminishing returns ...... Probably when your weighting the boat to the point that the gas mileage sucks.

Link to comment

There's a reason lead is illegal in just about any product.Crazy.gif I gets right into your blood, environment what ever. It's not even legal for fishing weights in National Parks. I wouldn't be doing any fabrication work with it, and keep your lead shot in plastic bags. You can probably line the shot bag with plastic if it's not already.

Link to comment

When I was looking for lead fo the tire shops I was told they sell it for scrap at a pretty good price and that they would not sell it to anyone of the street and I had a friend that was a mechanic at one of the shops tell me the same thing....from my experience......GB on pop bags Thumbup.gif

Link to comment

Let me interject this for you guys. The following is from the Pop Bag website:

"WHAT ARE THEY?

POP Products Weight Bags are simply tiny steel shot pellets housed in a plastic inner liner. Because the pellets are so small, you can actually mold the weight bags to fit in ANY space in your boat. Have a small storage space in the nose of your boat? No problem."

So, this product is NOT lead but steel shot. Several of us kicked around the idea of making these a few years ago. We were looking for a industrial manufacturer that would sell us punch outs from a hole punching operation. Something along the lines of a 1/4" X 1/4" punch out. After all this is scrap isn't it? Then we had to find a way to seal up the heavy plastic bags and make the canvas outer bags. It turned out to be easier to buy them already made than to produce the relatively small quantity that we needed.

Pop Bags are great to use for ballast to supplement your complete ballast system, not to be your only ballast system. They are very easy to move around when you need to balance out one side or the other or front to back. They pack away very good in the areas you need them and they stay put. Just remember that you will have to trailer with them in the boat.

There are several members here that use them successfully in their ballast systems and I encourage them to chime in here to give the other members somewhat of an idea to get them started on the proper way and amount of bags they need.

Link to comment

One of the problems with Pop is that with the shipping, we can't really get a discount even on a group buy type of setup. So we're trying to come up with alternatives. A few years ago there were several companies making lead bars, I think that one was called Lead Hedz. Searching hasn't come up with anything familiar though. If you search Google using the terms "lead ballast options", you can see that there are a number of bigger companies, but they're all uncoated bricks & I get the feeling that you'd have to buy a lot from them. Race cars use ballast to get weight distribution correct, so maybe there's something in that industry that could be pursued.

Link to comment

Why not just buy some 4" PVC pipe cut to desired length, put a PVC cap on both ends and fill full of concrete. The longer the pipe the heavier it will be. Dontknow.gif

Link to comment

Wake Girl, I dont know if your aware but Pop is located in SO cal. I am not at liberty to disclose the price, but when I was talking to Troy he noted that if I got a group buy together with a minimum of 2k in bags, the shipping would be free to nor cal, and this was a pretty good deal. There is also talks of them moving the product into board shops (one around disco bay) so the shipping would be free as well.

Now, this is what I was told about 1yr ago, so I dont know if things have changed, but I would think a trip to the Norcal Delta, lined up with a purchase of bags may pay off.

Bill, I agree. Generally the rule I apply (which I hate rules on a boat, but sometimes they are important) with riding behind my Bu fully weighted is that the rider needs at a MINIMUM to be able to clear the wake TS at 75ft plus... consistently. When they can do that, if they wish I will run the full weight for them. Its a good way to teach/break the heelside hero habit. Your burning the gas to make two wakes, you might as well use them both! (plus I personally think TS is a LOT more stylie than HS).

On a side note, one of the nicest things about Pop bags is the ability to balance the boat. No more sitting in the middle, or slightly off center of the back seat to get a even wake. Just throw them to one side and relax on the other! Everyone is comfy and nobody is sitting in an awkward place.

Link to comment

I would think that if we could get that deal with free shipping to everywhere in the US, then it would be doable. But my biggest concern was leaving people outside of Cali out of the loop on this. Liquid, maybe you should touch base with D-GOOSE & put your heads together on this one.

Link to comment
Why not just buy some 4" PVC pipe cut to desired length, put a PVC cap on both ends and fill full of concrete. The longer the pipe the heavier it will be. Dontknow.gif

Seems like that would roll around a lot, regardless of where it was sitting. Maybe gravel in some kind of bag would work though. You'd still have to make the bags. Maybe Pop will sell & ship just the bags, and then people can fill them with whatever they can find in their home town.

Link to comment

Just fill sacs with mercury! Crazy.gif

The 155 pound fat brick would be about 2100 pounds with mercury if it actually held together.

Link to comment
Woody are you saying or would you say. If a person could buy just the bags, then he could go down to a tire store and pic up used wheel weights for free. Then chop up wheel weights into small pieces to put into the bag?

I'm thinking is may be a good DIY job to save some $$$

Bingo! We just need to find someone with a shot maker. They will usually take a cut of the lead for themselves as a fee.

Link to comment

I don't know if Pro Flight still sells them but if your in the Modesto Ca. area There rubber coated 65lb bars. I picked up 5 of them but it was 3 or 4 years ago.

Link to comment

I have made the 4" pvc tubes and they are not even close in weight to 1 pop bag. I did everything possible to fit as much lead in there as possible and the best case scenario was only 25lbs with an 18" tube, which is better than water but worse than pop bags or bars.

I also melted the tire weights into bars and poured them into bread pans which worked okay. The main issue is rounding the top edges so they are not sharp and covering them with something to keep them safe. Rhino liner works well but its pricey.

Honestly after struggling with making every type of lead format I could I went with pop. Even with their shipped prices it worked out cheaper than my materials and time. Even if I charged 25/hr, bypassed any sort of EPA regulation and just poored bars, it would be about the same as pop products for bars. Lead is some nasty stuff and I personally would rather limit my intake.

Link to comment

If you are looking for lead tire weights, try the mom and pops type garages. I have had my best luck in those and they will usually sell you a bucket full pretty cheap.

Link to comment
I have made the 4" pvc tubes and they are not even close in weight to 1 pop bag. I did everything possible to fit as much lead in there as possible and the best case scenario was only 25lbs with an 18" tube, which is better than water but worse than pop bags or bars.

I also melted the tire weights into bars and poured them into bread pans which worked okay. The main issue is rounding the top edges so they are not sharp and covering them with something to keep them safe. Rhino liner works well but its pricey.

Honestly after struggling with making every type of lead format I could I went with pop. Even with their shipped prices it worked out cheaper than my materials and time. Even if I charged 25/hr, bypassed any sort of EPA regulation and just poored bars, it would be about the same as pop products for bars. Lead is some nasty stuff and I personally would rather limit my intake.

I did about the same thing as you a few yrs back. I melted down the tire weights into a round tube and then cut them into 16" lenghts. It was a PITA but did get 40lbs per foot. If I had to do it again pop bags is the way to go, very easy to move and store.

Link to comment

I agree that the bags are the way to go. But shipping them is what appears to be the big expense.

So does anyone know if your able to purchase steel shot locally? And what is the cost? What kind of place even carries it?

Or what if you filled the Pop bags with something else? What is the weight difference in steel shot & pea gravel? Or sand? Or ????

Link to comment
Or what if you filled the Pop bags with something else? What is the weight difference in steel shot & pea gravel? Or sand? Or ????

Your problem would be weight differences. Sand weighs approximately 100 lbs per cubic foot while steel runs 490. You'd have to carry a lot more cubic feet if using sand.

...makes me glad I'm a slalom guy. Biggrin.gif

Link to comment
I agree that the bags are the way to go. But shipping them is what appears to be the big expense.

So does anyone know if your able to purchase steel shot locally? And what is the cost? What kind of place even carries it?

Or what if you filled the Pop bags with something else? What is the weight difference in steel shot & pea gravel? Or sand? Or ????

I've done the steel shot thing in the past. You can buy it at Bi Mart (I think that you can buy actual lead shot as well). But by the time you buy it, then figure out how to store it....PITA. I can look into that again if we could line up a buy on just the bags, but the problem is that it will rust because it's not coated.

Link to comment

So I went to sportsman warehouse today just to look around for alternativies. The only thing I found was a 25lb bag of steel shot for about $50.00 so I don't see any real way to save any money building them ourselves.

post-1292-1204932003_thumb.jpg

Link to comment

D-Goose I totally agree. Its just one of those things where everyone thinks "hey it cannot be that expensive" then when you get down to it, between the time and expense your like "screw this" and just want to fork over the dough. I spent an ENTIRE DAY making lead bars on a coleman 3 burner natural gas stove. I ended up with about 100lbs of lead and who knows how much I breathed in. It just isnt worth it, but you gotta make that effort to realize it.

I remember finding a place on line that made the same bags as pop bags and I wanted to buy a few but I never heard back from them. If you could just get the bags they use and use your own weights without any other effort it MIGHT be worth it.

Link to comment

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Restore formatting

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...