jboweriii

We had about30 lbs of lead and meltedit down. We poured the lead into empty frisky cans. Bent a nail and put a pencil to hold into place. Cooled down with water and cut the cans off. They weighed3 lbs 14 oz. - to 4 lbs 11 oz. Better than buying. Took about an hour to make 6 sinkers.

Jason

Where did you put the hole? The center of the weight would make the sinker flutter a bit...I thought about this and thought it might be good to use some conduit and cut it in half then use a few hose clamps to hold it together w/ a cap of some sort or wooden dowell plug, you could even drill a hole up where you need the hole and slide a nail through (or just drill a hole in it after pouring). Pour your lead and let cool. This sinker will sink better then a flat chunk of lead just fer future reference.:letsdrink

1bandit

You can't drill lead that thick. Something tall and narrow like a red bull can would be less likely to hang up

CATCH-ALL

What Bandit said.

When I was deepdropping on the east coast on structure in current up to six knots, you can imagine we lost a lot of lead weights. We eventually started making our own weights. A Red Bull can is perfect for a 4 lb weight.A 16 oz Miller High Life can was great for a 7 lb weight.

Since we were using a smallish lead-melting pot we had to do the pours in several stages. That meant leaving the aluminum can "skin" on to keep the different lead layers from separating.

MAKE SURE TO MELT THE LEAD OUTDOORS AND DONTBREATHE THE FUMES FROM DOWNWIND. Have whole milk on hand and chug it - White Russians do the job admirably. Learned the milktrick from an ol' Montana lead miner.

Catch

Bubba Squid

Here's a decent 3lb mold I bought that works pretty decent..Get em on EBAY I poured about 10 of em...and they make a good cast

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...m=160409373497

CATCH-ALL

BubbaSquid - thanks for the link. One of the problems about using Red Bull cans is that while the cans are great for molds you really dont want to drink the rancid crap that is inisde the cans. But it's so expensive to buy that your inner frugality tells you not to let it go to waste.What happens? You wind up making yourself a bunch of vodka & Red Bulls while you're making lead weights.

Molten lead the temperature of liquid hot magma + booze + rancid crap = trouble

One night I was making a bunch of deepdrop weights next to my pool figuring if I splashed lead on myself I could jump in the pool to cool off. :doh First the vodka kicks in and I'm getting SLEEPY... Sleepy..... sleepy...........but then the Red Bull takes over and I go manic, yelling inside to my Date Du Jour, "hey baby! Make me nuther one quick! I love this Red Bull, Red Bull, Red Bull, Red Bull, Red Bull, Red Bull!"

Lather , rinse, repeat. :hotsun

Don't try this at home. Your results may vary.

Oh, one more thing, and I'm being serious. Make damn sure that the innards of your Red Bull or beer can molds are absolutely dry. If they aren't , the splashing of the lead as it hits the liquid beer, water or Red Bull is horrendous and you wind up getting hurt bad.

Mark