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Yep that's a lot of lead Frank. Your configuration is very custom, so flat slabs of steel bolted on all over the place might not look to good on a flying saucer. ;} If you had to add 44% to the planned lead volume to change over to steel, it could be hard to tuck all that steel away with out having some custom castings made up. I like the idea of putting as much of the needed extra weight into batteries and drop weights. I know were there is a very large lead keel that broke off a large sail boat in a storm when it came up to close to shore in a storm off the Oregon coast. Trick is getting it up out of the sand that is covered with water in the surge zone. This is were you need one of those industrial transporters from Star Trek. I can see on my sub how I could pretty easily convert to steel for the ballast and drop weights. But since I already have all the lead that I should need that came with my sub I'll likely will just use that lead. I'll be interested is how the KSS steel ballast and drop weights will be configured. I see all manor of thick steel plates in the scrap steel yards for .25 cents a pound of less. I figure that even if I only had one inch thick plate to work with, that I could just stack them together after cutting there profiles and TIG weld the joining beveled edges together to seal between the plates. Then weld on the SS tabs and/or bushings and apply all your coatings. Regards, Szybowski From: ShellyDalg@aol.com Date: Wed, 24 Jun 2009 10:55:59 -0400 Subject: Re: [PSUBS-MAILIST] Recycling Lead To: personal_submersibles@psubs.org Hi Brent. I wonder how useful that "plasti-dip" stuff would be on a saltwater boat. I may give it a try. As for lead versus steel, well, one of the great things about lead is it's so easy to melt and pour into specific shapes. My lead ballast will be poured into "bricks" that fit the curvature of the bottom of the hull. With nuts embedded in them so I can bolt them down. The drop weight lead will be poured into a steel "keel" with the drop socket mechanism also embedded in the lead. Remember that we need an extra drop weight just in case we have to drop one, and then use the spare to retrieve the first one. That adds up to a lot of lead!
Frank D.
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