Homemade weights for us working class folks!

ok guys and gals. i have been creeping around this forum for about the last 3 months. a little about me!
i have been certified since i was 13 and now im 25 and have just done my first open water dive last week. a friend of mine here on the ms gulf coast got me back into it. pathetic as it was, my parents spent all that money to get my c card and then they still left me at home while they went on vacation every 6 months. Well im getting into it again and i couldnt believe the price of dive weights. Some shops are charging as much as $5-6 a pound. insane if you ask me. my LDS happens to be selling them for $4 a pound which i feel to still be a little too high for some metal. its not gold. anyways. i have been doing research on different ideas for ballast and i got to thinking, you can make your own weights with the lead shot they use in soft weights. you just have to find it. Well its too late for me to do a DIY on it tonight but i wanted to let everyone know that i have succeeded and tomorrow im going to make an official DIY with pictures and pricing differences and inform everyone on how to pay atleast 1/3rd the price if not 1/4 the price for soft weights. Keep this thread in mind and ill talk to you then.

MODs i know this is probably not the right place for this thread, but its primarily used for awareness. i have been on this board for 3 months and just stumbled way down to the DIY threads last week. Here is the link to the real DIY. its a work in progress so be patient and enjoy.

http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/do...softweights-1-4th-cost-eco-friendly-well.html

That's funny cause I did the same thing. I get lots of ribbing from other divers cause my weights are just old steel bb's stuffed in two sets of old thick panty hose, but they work and if you drop them on your foot, it's not so bad.

If you really want to save money and recycle lead, try melting and casting your own. I'm not going to repeat all the safety stuff here with casting - go to the BC, & weights forum for that, but its pretty easy to get lead from a tire shop or stained glass shop (where I got mine), and melt in a pot with a MAPP gas torch or two (one underneath, one directly on the lead).

Then I took one of our old frying pans with the teflon coating, and tilted it on a brick so I could pour into the curved edge of the pan - trick here is utilizing the non-stick coating to de-mold the ingot. After casting several puddles in this kidney shape, I then welded (using the torch) the castings together in pairs (see the welds in the pic below), and the weights are awesome, as they form fit in a BC pocket quite well. I sawed off the ends of one for a buddy's weight belt too.

I went to the local reloading shop and purchased a 25# bag of 7 shot at about #1.80 a pound then used some spare 1000 denier nylon (BC material) and sewed bags of 1,2 and 3# each. total cost not much more than 1.80 a pound. they are a little bit water tight so they hold some air for a minute or two before fully flooding and then drip for some minutes when I get out, but I think that could be solved by a wider setting on the sewing machine.

I managed to scrounge some scrap lead from a few places, and picked up a almost full bag of lead shot from a gun show for pretty cheap. I bought an old sauce pan at a thrift store, along with a small metal loaf pan, and melted the lead over our camp stove outside. I poured it into the loaf pan and allowed it to cool a bit, then (using a pair of pliers to hold the loaf pan) inverted it over a cooling rack. I had no problem with the weight releasing.

They're not pretty, but they work. One of the biggest drawbacks is that the old lead shot had quite a bit of oxidation on the outside, so there was more loss to dross than I expected.

I will repeat the caveat of safety in dealing with melting your own lead. Not only is the molten lead a significant burn hazard, the potential for absorbing lead from the fumes is also a real concern.

Not long after, I saw an ad on Craigslist from someone selling off some of their excess scuba stuff, and picked up another 25 pounds of hard weights from them for a whopping $5 (along with a few other things, like an unused dive reel and a dive flag with buoy).

I heartily recommend watching your local Craigslist for someone offloading old weights. Sometimes, all they want to do is get rid of them and get a little money for it (maybe they're getting out of diving, or have switched strictly to soft weights), and you can find some great deals that way. You can also find people who think their junk is really gold, but since you already have a good idea what new weights cost, you're not likely to get tricked into paying more for used than you would for new.

thanks for the comments. there is alot of good info around. we just need to open it up to people. i know i saved myself about $86 building my weights to my standards. ill say total between my wife and i, ill have about $78 into the weights for both my wife and myself and i will have saved $172 overall. thats like saying, buy these weights from your LDS and get a free boat dive trip for you and your wife. pretty nice of you think about it like that.

I am NOT trying to be a smart ass here but I dropped alot of weight after my peak buoyancy class . . . If you haven't taken the class, I'd suggest it. Improved my diving 10 fold and saved me a bundle on weights!

thats a good point. i will check into that for my self. i still however like to atleast carry some extra weights for the ones that may need it. to sum it up, i like to be over prepared. right now i have purchased all my gear except the weights because i have been using a friends when we go diving. one thing that i might point out about the class is that some people may not have the money, the time, or the awareness about this class. its the first i have heard of any kind of buoyancy class. on the other hand. its just a piece of knowledge for the people that are in the market for a weight or 2, or want to add to their collection, or whatever the case may be. for the price of 2 5 lb weights, you can have 25 lbs custom fitted.

I use lead for some other stuff, so I already have one or two 5 gallon buckets of wheel weights. A tire shop will most likely give them to you, just ask. Step one, melt them down. Step two, skim off the wheel weight hooks. Steps three, add a tinning agent to make them harder, add some solder. Step four, pour in mold. That’s it you’re done; slid them on a belt and go diving. A word of caution melting lead can hurt you in many ways, like the smoke has Arsenic, and if a drop of water makes it into the melting pot, hot lead is going everywhere. You can read about melting lead at Castboolits.com