Will lead prices bring the end of lead ballasts

[Phil Dory]

The cost of lead is increasing dramatically. A foundry quoted me $1.88/pd retail today. On the market, it has almost quadrupled over the last five years, although there was a slight fall the last few months.

I'm starting on a boat that requires a simple ballasted keel, about 1000 pds, which seems standard for a 20' boat. That means close to $2000 just for ingots (less shipping). Pouring that much lead is beyond my capabilities, so I have to get a foundry to mold and cast it, easily doubling the cost - shipping would add quite a few hundred dollars. Bottom line is that the ballast will be the most expensive part of the boat, by far, which I find incredible. It soon may be worth buying old sailboats just for their lead.

What are the alternatives? Everything else being less dense than lead therefore must be larger for the same weight. How does one deal with that problem?

Lead prices will keep increasing as the metal is being consumed by newly industrialized countries with insatiable appetites for it; every imported electronic gizmo you own, such as your portable GPS, requires lead for its manufacture.

We wooden boat enthusiasts should start discussing and testing different ballast designs and materials, or it will be back to bilges full of stones.

[epoxyboy]

Hey, no problem - there are thousands of tons of D.U. (depleted uranium) rounds sprayed all around Iraq. The locals would prolly pay you to take the stuff back. Weighs far more than lead too. On the other hand, stones dont glow in the dark so they won't ruin your night vision.

Yeah, I know, cheap shot. Just feeling grumpy tonight :-/

Pete

[JimD]

Having rather severe budget restraints myself I pretty much only seriously look at designs that can be ballasted with scrap iron and cement.

[Thorne]

There is a large difference between commercial pure lead ingots, and the waste lead that you can melt, clean, and cast -- the latter should be more available as environmental procedures put pressure on businesses that handle things like tire weights, old lead shot, lead roof flashing, and other lead waste.

In other words, rather than pay the price for 'proper' disposal or even resale, these outfits may be really happy to hand it off to you for free.

[StevenBauer]

Lots of folks who had no prior experience have cast their own lead keels. Some have even documented the process here. I've got about 500 lbs laying around that I was gathering for my Eun Mara build. Much of it came from a fire at a tire store - for free. I've got a couple of plumber friends that give me stuff they take out of old houses. Roofers sometimes have some to get rid of, too. If you can build a boat you might be able to cast a keel. :)


Steven

[paladin]

Just a note for above...new RoHs compliance rules say no lead....in electronics...
and the advice is good...I'm collecting wheel weights again....I have a half dozen white paint buckets that I take to local tire stores...I usually pick up (I have someone with me to pick them up) about 10-20 pounds per week per tire store, I pass 4 when I do my weekly grocery shopping.

[boylesboats]

Just go 'round pick up some junk car batteries, wheel weights, old house plumbings, fishing weights.. you'll be surprise how much you save from buying all that lead

[Phil Dory]

Pouring a ballast is no doubt within the skills of the average boatbuilder, but that's not my point. Some of us just don't live in a neighborhood where one would be comfortable doing that - it's just respectful to hold off on potentially dangerous processes in some circumstances. If you can cast it yourself then sure, collecting lead over the years and pouring it is the way to go. In the past, the rest of us could go to a foundry and get a ballast cast for a reasonable price because lead was cheap and you paid mostly for labor. Those days are gone - a lead ballast will be at least 50% of the cost of my boat, and possibly more.

[JimD]

Phil, I forget which design you're building.

[Frank Wentzel]

Lead prices are tracking along pretty well with everything else when one ingnores short term volitility. When I graduated college in 1969 lead was $0.18 lb and gasoline was about $0.26 a gallon. Gasoline now runs 12 times as much, so with lead at only 10 times as expensive - its a bargain!

/// Frank ///

[Tom Robb]

More than a few iron ballast keels out there too.

[gert]

pick up some junk car batteries

I will have the same issue in a few years; don't know that batteries are a good idea or even usable.

[PatrickXavier]

My cutter, Rogue (Charles Bailey Jnr, Auckland NZ, 1892), gave up her lead ballast for the war effort in 1916, and replaced it with iron of slightly larger (but materially less streamlined: in the 1940s, Rogue was slipped, and the leading edge of the ballast was cut away using drills and sledgehammers in an attempt to improve) proportions. We are restoring the original lead ballast now (approximately 2 tonnes), obtaining the necessary by scavenging: despite the market price of lead, the cost of reducing scrap metal to ingots for commercial supply is still sufficiently prohibitive to make scavenging worthwhile. Incidentally, I'd understood a major contributor to the steady climb in lead prices was increasing (particularly UK/European) demand for shielding for mothballed 1950s nuclear facilities.

[Brian Palmer]

Junk car batteries are NOT NOT NOT a good source of lead for ballast in any quantity. Don't even think of doing it for a centerboard weight.

Most of the lead in a car battery is lead oxide and will not melt over a fire. It has to be chemically reduced from lead oxide to lead metal at very high temperatures (2500 F) and specific conditions that can only be achieved in a smelting furnace.

If you break batteries to recover the lead at home or in your shop, you will wind up with contaminated plastic, spent acid, and lead oxide dust that will all conspire to turn your shop into a "superfund" site, and you will be liable to pay the clean up costs.

I know this because I studied the secondary lead smelter industry for several years as a project for the US EPA.

--Brian

[Brian Palmer]

I did... got about 5 pounds of clean lead from each of 24 group size battery

OK, but what happened to the other 5 to 10 lbs of lead oxide paste, spent acid, and plastic? Lead oxide paste will not melt without a reducing atmosphere at high temperature and in the presence of fluxing agents (like iron) to scavenge the oxygen.

If a car battery goes to a lead smelter, it is all recycled, even the acid and plastic. Most battery retailers will pay you a core charge on each returned battery. You could take this and buy almost as much lead metal from a scrap dealer as you could get by melting the lead metal from a battery at home.

--Brian

[boylesboats]

OK, but what happened to the other 5 to 10 lbs of lead oxide paste, spent acid, and plastic? Lead oxide paste will not melt without a reducing atmosphere at high temperature and in the presence of fluxing agents (like iron) to scavenge the oxygen.

If a car battery goes to a lead smelter, it is all recycled, even the acid and plastic. Most battery retailers will pay you a core charge on each returned battery. You could take this and buy almost as much lead metal from a scrap dealer as you could get by melting the lead metal from a battery at home.

--Brian

Just by snapping off posts from batteries

[Chan]

Tire weights are ideal because they already contain the antimony. They are becoming harder to find for free as the price of lead increases. I'm finding that my old reliable sources are now selling rather than giving tire weights. Last I checked clean scrap lead was going for $.25 a pound, tire weights $.20 a pound. Offer $.15 a pound and you have a thousand pounds for $150. Hardly worth reverting to stones.

[jtoro]

I am in the process of cleaning about 1200 lbs of scrap lead for a ballast keel project. In Connecticut the rates for what scrap yards will pay varries greatly. At the low end I found 20 cents lb for scrap wheel weights and 45 cents at the high end. For scrap flashing etc. the rates were a little better at .25 and .45. That being said only one scrap yard here will sell scrap lead and the price is 1.00/ lb, pretty stern.

I should mention that in one Saturday afternoon we collected about 700 lbs of lead from tire places in town. Explained the project to them and we got various responses ranging from very interested and here have all of my lead for 23 dollars per full 5 gallon bucket (5gal=150total pounds about 100lbs cleaned lead so around .15 cents/ lbs not too shabby) to NO get out it is illegal for us to sell lead to you. It seems like it all boils down to finding the right person. But I think there is still enough scrap around that it may be a little while before it becomes an unrealistic ballast material.

Joe

P.S.

MELTING WHEEL WEIGHTS STINKS TO HIGH HEAVEN! Wear a lead approved respirator! Do it in a place far from neighbors as they will most liekly call the FD when they smell your project.

[dmede]

Jay Benford spec's cement in some of his plans, specifically the supply boat Batten, and possibly others.

http://www.benford.us/index.html?pcty/

[JimD]

Many of Paul Fisher's designs have scrap filled box keels.

[Mike Vogdes]

I did renovation of a radiology lab last month and stripped the walls of sheets of lead 4'x7'. We had over 3,000 lbs of lead and scrapped it for .35 a lb. sorry, didn't think to come here and look for a buyer. The sheet rock we put back had a thin veneer of lead bonded to the back of the rock, 300.00 a sheet (ouch).

[donald branscom]

If you collect wheel weights DONT melt them down just dump them in the mold or steel box.

You always hear about wheel weights BUT it is not cheap OR easy. Waste of TIME to melt them down and seperate out the steel part,as far as i am concerned,

Just buy scrap lead.

[Pierce Nichols]

Bottom line is that the ballast will be the most expensive part of the boat, by far, which I find incredible. It soon may be worth buying old sailboats just for their lead.

It already is, in some cases. Gives me an idea -- the price paid by scrap dealers for sailboat-sized lots of lead is about $0.30/lb here in CA. There are a number of people here who need lead for sailboats they are building... given that six-to-one markup, I think there's an opportunity here for someone to cut in on the middlemen and recycle old sailboat ballast directly into new sailboat ballast at a substantial profit.