weight moulds

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leee

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where can i buy a weight mould i have loads of lead but no mould HELP?
 
Try some of the mail order catelogs, and also check with your LDS. The LDS should be able to get one for you.

When you mold weights, be very careful how you go about it. Here's some suggestions, based upon the fact that lead is very, very toxic.

--Pick where you do it very carefully. Do not do it in an enclosed room, such as a kitchen or garage.

--Melt the lead only to the melting point, and not any higher. Higher temperatures vaporizes the lead, and you will inhale it, which is not good. You may wish to use a welder's fume respirator when you melt and pour the lead.

--Take very much care not to do it anywhere close to the living quarters of children. Lead is very bad for kids; even small exposures can lower IQ, and larger ones can be very detrimental.

--Don't saw or drill on lead if you can help it. The lead spreads, and when it is in the environment, it becomes a part of what we are exposed to. This especially includes kids and pets.

--Finally, take great care with personal hygiene. Wash clothes immediately after the operation, and alone (without other clothes). Wash your hands before doing anything else after pouring the molds and working with lead. One way it gets into us is when we eat it. We eat it by handling food with dirty hands. We can also smoke lead, by handling cigarettes with lead-contaminated hands (not that any good diver smokse, you know).

'Hope this helps.

SeaRat
 
You can get fancy and make your own molds in some interesting shapes. Make them either out of metal or the easy sand cast method.

Wear boots, long pants, long sleve shirt and gloves. Make sure the ventilation is good.

Gary D.
 
And if you use the sand casting method, make sure the sand is dry, otherwise you will end up with a steam explosion. I made a mold by welding 1" wide pieces of steel to a flat plate. Not neccesarily the best way, but it worked and I had an entire bucket of old wheel weights left over from my bullet and sinker casting days.
 
Heating the mold prior to pouring also makes for a better cast - you don't get as rough a surface where the molten lead "freezes" on contact with a cold mold. When doing sinkers, I would use a kerosene blowtorch for melting the lead, and them warm the mold with the blowtorch before pouring. The finish was excellent, as opposed to merely pouring lead into the cold mold.

Ditto on the "dry sand" comment - if you're dunking the mold in water between pours to cool the poured weight, heating the mold can evaporate off any water spots you may have missed. The mold MUST MUST MUST be totally dry. Water and molten lead is literally explosive - water (even droplets) will instantly boil off into steam, expand massively as it converts into gas, and the resulting expansion can blast bits of molten lead everywhere. Not a good thing to have bare skin or flammable clothing around.

A sure-fire way to hurt yourself is to spit or pour water into a ladle or crucible of molten lead.
 
I hadn't thought about the sand explosion potential. In that case, use ANSI Z82 rated safety glasses under a face shield, and leather gloves too.

SeaRat
 
I used some old broiler pans that I picked up at Value Village, then hack-sawed the weights to the right size. It's not precise, but I'm happy with the results!
 
leee:
where can i buy a weight mould i have loads of lead but no mould HELP?
Have you looked on eBay. I frequently post moulds for sale. I have 2, 3 and 4 pound open face moulds. I also have 4, 5, 5.5 and 6 pound split moulds for weights that weave onto the belt. In addition, I have a 2 pound bullet style split mould. Have a look on eBay using search words "SCUBA" and "MOULD". You may also contact me directly through the "contact member" feature on eBay or at <logicdesign@rogers.com>. I am in Canada.
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/swift/

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