Lead ballast tubes

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I just finished making some PVC ballast tubes filled with lead tire weights and sand. I went to my local mechanic and he gave me two 5-gallon buckets full of old car wheel-balancing weights. He was happy to get rid of them.

I first went to Home Depot and bought a 10' x 3" piece of Schedule 40 PVC for about $8, and eight yellow "punch-out" caps for $0.25 per cap. These are pretty flimsy and don't stay in too well, so I epoxy-glued them in and we'll see how long they last. The heavy Schedule 40 end caps that you should use are $2.50 per cap, so 8 of them would have been $20.

I cut the 10' length into four equal 2.5' pieces. I put in some sand, put in some lead weights, put in some sand, shook it to settle the sand, then repeated until the tubes were filled. Then I put the caps on and sealed them with the epoxy glue that I already had lying around. Each tube ended up weighing about 29 pounds. I was hoping for closer to 50 pounds.

I still had about had about a bucket and a half of tire weights left, so I went to Lowes' and bought a 10' x 4" piece of Schedule 40 PVC for $11. I also bought six Schedule 40 end caps for $5.50 per, or $33 for all six. I cut off a 4' section, filled it with weights and sand and capped both ends, which ended up weighing 70 pounds. I suggest that is the heaviest you make any single ballast weight, because although 70 pounds doesn't sound like a lot, it is pain in the arse to move around much.

I then cut the remaining 4" PVC into two equal 3' sections, filled and capped them, and they came out to about 63 pounds each. So apparently I got better and better at packing the tubes as I went along, since the 3' tubes weigh almost as much as the 4' tube.

So I made 7 tubes, for a total of about 312 pounds, at a cost of about $54 plus tax. I need the weight for my closed-bow '86 Mastercraft PS 190, where it would be difficult to fill and empty a standard fat sack. Down the road, I may setup a ballast system with a reversible pump so I don't have to touch a sack under the bow, but that will cost a lot more than $54, so we'll give this a try for a while until me and my friends get sick of lugging those tubes in and out of my boat. I still have half a bucket of weights, but I don't want any more tubes. Oh, and I didn't want to fool with melting down the lead.