WolfSpring
Registered
I'm still starting out with SCUBA but I have all my own gear, bought used rental gear, and had mask snorkel from snorkeling and bought some good fins as well. When I went to buy weights after learning my buoyancy I was completely dumbfounded at why weights were $6 a pound! I thought must be Hawaii thing so lets look online, they are just as much if not more when you start looking shipping, even used they are 4-5 a pound! So I looked into making my own. I already had the big dipper furnace and all the tools to make bullets and had made them from tire weights years ago so I started looking at ebay for molds and found an old 3 lb mold for 20 bucks, picked up another 1-4.5 pound titan mold(love the ingot it can produce hate the mold grr...) and I picked up 44 pounds of lead ingots for 70 bucks, that's a $1.60 a pound! I can also do .375 and .457 balls but only 2 at a time and it's slow, but I'm going to try and make soft weights next. I know they aren't pretty but they are functional and more than 1/3 the price! These took roughly an hour to make 12 lbs and about 20 balls, though I wasn't focusing on making balls. The big dipper setup cost me 60 bucks back in 2012. This really isn't hard I did it in the back yard so if you are looking to save some money and don't care about looks this is the way to go. I'm going to file them down a little and have even considered using a sealing bag so I am more ecofriendly and don't have any pieces flake off.