How to secure lead ingot ballast???

Part of installing a bow thruster on Weebles involved removing the concrete/punching ballast beneath the forward cabin. About 850 lbs of it. I have found ~65 lb lead pig ingots which are less than half the volume of the concrete. About a dozen of them need to nestle into the forward bilge of the hull.

I am looking for suggestions on securing them. Pouring resin or epoxy over them would generate a lot of heat and not sure that thick a pour is within design spec. I could do it in layers but would still be a thick pour. I thought about using floor leveling compound which is some sort of modified polymer cement that also has an exothermic reaction but less than two part epoxy or resin. Or concrete but would have to use traditional stones as aggregate.

Thoughts on best approach to securing ballast pigs?

Thanks in advance

Peter

Greetings,
Mr. mv. IF you can achieve the desired weight with lead, might you be able to simply pour in a 2 part expanding foam after placing the ingots? All you need to do is stop the lead from bouncing around. Just a WAG.

Thanks. How solid is the cured foam? My plan is to not install all the ballast until the boat has a half load of fuel aboard, then finalize. Was thinking of permanently securing 80% then use the last 20% as movable ballast. I suppose I could sheet over thr permanent ballast and mount the moveable on top.

Good idea on the foam though. It's made to creep into crevices. Thanks

Peter

Greetings,
Mr. mv. The only foam I know a bit about is that which forms on the top of my root beer mug. I suspect one can purchase foams with pretty well any characteristic (density, porosity, reaction time(s) etc.).


https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffnt&q=2+part+pourable+marine+foam&iax=images&ia=images


One potential advantage might be that foam would probably be easier to remove for whatever reason than a hard epoxy or cement.

A friend's 65 viking sport fish came from the factory with foam securing lead ballast in the lazarette.

Might you be able to further reduce the the space around the ingots and maybe the ingots themselves by filling the area around them with lead shot? Seem to recall a couple building a Diesel Duck out of aluminum that secured the lead ingots with epoxy filled with lead shot. It would seem to require substantially less epoxy (substantially reduced heat buildup) and possibly further lower your center of ballast in the bottom of the boat.

Ted

O C Diver said:

Might you be able to further reduce the the space around the ingots and maybe the ingots themselves by filling the area around them with lead shot? Seem to recall a couple building a Diesel Duck out of aluminum that secured the lead ingots with epoxy filled with lead shot. It would seem to require substantially less epoxy (substantially reduced heat buildup) and possibly further lower your center of ballast in the bottom of the boat.

Ted

Click to expand...

I thought about filling the gaps with shot. It's about the cheapest form of lead. As an aside, topic of ballast comes up from time to time and there's always a reference to how easy it is to find scrape lead for cheap. Was not my experience. I ended up paying about $1.45/lb, though shot was available at around $1/lb. As you can imagine, delivery is costly.

I dont understand the plan. Are you looking to place the ingots then pour something over them? Or glue them in individually?

bayview said:

I dont understand the plan. Are you looking to place the ingots then pour something over them? Or glue them in individually?

Click to expand...

Good question. I wasn't clear. Never occurred to me to just glue in place. It's a dry bilge and good storage (used to be my wine cellar). So a flat surface is strongly preferred. I'd always envisioned something pour over. But I'm open to ideas. Could certainly build a platform over the ballast. A recent thread by a Marine Trader 49 has a small amount of ballast covered by a plywood platform.

How much of a roll are you designing for? A 45deg roll all should stay put, and that is not a minor roll. And I would not want to foam it in (seems to be a good idea, by the way) until you are absolutely sure you have the right amount in there.

Run it around for a while with ballast loose. Then deal with restraining it.

If you had to remove the existing ballast in order to access the area for bow thruster install, won't you need to remove it again if you ever need to do any repairs to the area? I would hesitate to epoxy something in that may have to be removed at a later date. If you are concerned with shifting, foam, like "Great Stuff", available at any box store has the benefit of being able to cut out to remove the ballast (It would be a mess, and take awhile, but it CAN be removed). Epoxy would be much more difficult. It is possible to lay the ballast in carefully, and place a cover over it, with tabs fiber glassed to the hull to secure it? Just thinking out loud here!
Edit: Attached is a pic of lead ballast in our new to us boat. It's not secured in any way, however it IS toward the rear (roundy end) of the boat, so not as likely subjected to rise and fall like it would be in the bow (the pointy end).
I couldn't see any signs of it moving around/wear marks in the compartment it was located. Seller says it was like that when he purchased the boat 31 years ago, so I don't think it's going anywhere . . . .

I would prefer a removable platform. Pouring something requires the boat to be at the right angle to cause a flat surface.
A dab of gorilla glue will stick anything.

Thanks all. Having input was helpful. I had planned to leave some of the ballast moveable until sea trials, but as Ski noted, no reason to fix any of it too soon. My boat has a full keel and the bilge is pretty narrow so ballast won't get too randy.

I'll post pictures as I get closer.

Thanks for the "Bigger Brain" perspective

Peter

When one of the POs had a generator added they added lead ingots 5200’d together. They don’t even wiggle after 35 years.

My plan A would be to lay the ingots as tightly as possible in the bottom of the space vacated by the concrete and punchings, then secure a plywood sole on top of them. Wooden pads bonded to hull that you could screw the outboard edges of the plywood to comes to mind for securing plywood. The lead will only move in an extreme upset, ‘cause, well, it’s heavy, and if it does move you only need to keep it close to where It belongs. This should leave room for part of your displaced wine on top of the plywood, plus you can remove the plywood easily to adjust lead quantity.

In Hull #6 Willard placed several trim ballast ingots under the starboard berth, simply nailed to the sole under the drawers with galvanized common nails. If you need additional trim later you could nail (or screw) it to the the above mentioned plywood sole.

Bill.

We added a bunch of the 65 pound ingots in a previous boat. We laid them out and then glassed over them so they were very solid and never moved.

You could try a deep pour epoxy in a multiple layer pour. The down side is where your boat is. Temperatures below 70 help keep the cure time longer thus less of an exothermic reaction. Mas Epoxy is known for its lower temperature cures.

When I added a 300 lb generator off the centerline I had to add 750 lbs in the keel area amidships. I used a combination of 4200 2x4s lag bolts and plywood. Since it’s in our keel it should be fine unless we go more than 120 degrees, and that would create numerous other issues so I’m not really worried.

I do not understand the consensus here about securing lead ingots. That lead is HEAVY. A really, really bad a pitch or roll would be required to get them to even budge never mind shift enough to create a danger. My opinion is that this another boating "yeah but what if". Just wedge them in place. Plus, if you glass or epoxy them in place now you have no ability to rebalance later.

I have about 600 pounds of lead on board in the form of reclaimed shotgun shot in heavy plastic canvas 25# bags. I have them in cubbies where it is impossible for them to shift at all.

I have a total of 6000 lbs ballast plus a small amount of moveable trim ballast. C-Jack, I understand your point, but securing it isn't difficult and I'd feel a lot better about having it secured. 800 lbs loose, especially in the bow area, is just not something I want to worry about even if it's unlikely to move

I like the idea of a tabbed in, but removable, platform above the level of the most ballast you'd ever want to add there.

I guess that's not really "tabbed in," but what I'm envisioning is lay up the tabs with something like packing tape so the shelf is not bonded to them and they are actually more like "cleat/tabs" -- and then have a way to fasten the top platform that can also be undone/redone on a not-regular basis.

Then your wine or whatever goes on the platform.

There are a couple of ballast manufacturers who make lead shot you mix in a concrete mixer with a slow curing resin. Normally you stack the ingots in and fill the voids with the shot and epoxy mix. normally we follow that with a couple of layers of cloth and resin to seal it in for life.

Martin J said:

Normally you stack the ingots in and fill the voids with the shot and epoxy mix. normally we follow that with a couple of layers of cloth and resin to seal it in for life.

Click to expand...

That sounds like an even better idea if the ballast position and amount is to be relatively permanent (I wasn't sure).

The expanding foam crack sealer/insulation gets pretty darn hard. You can take a surform rasp and level it out if it bulges too much for a nice clean look. Or cut a board to fit as a lid and press it into the raising foam as it sets. You might want to weight it down with a battery or something to keep it in place. A couple 2 inch holes bored into it will leave room for expansion also. It will be easy to pull off any overfill.

pete

Pete Meisinger said:

The expanding foam crack sealer/insulation gets pretty darn hard. You can take a surform rasp and level it out if it bulges too much for a nice clean look. Or cut a board to fit as a lid and press it into the raising foam as it sets. You might want to weight it down with a battery or something to keep it in place. A couple 2 inch holes bored into it will leave room for expansion also. It will be easy to pull off any overfill.

pete

Click to expand...

The holes are a good idea Pete. I've worked with this stuff a bunch. A variation of it is used to hold down clay roof tiles in Miami to meet hurricane codes.

I secured my boats ballast ingots with a few bags of concrete mix with very little water added to barely make it plastic.
Packed it in with a hammer, probably doesn’t go below the second layer, but forms a very solid top that can be nicely leveled off, and removed if necessary with minimal work.
Lead won’t move about much unless it’s got room to move.
If it does move, it’s not going to worry me much, because the boat will be upside down and I’ll be swimming for my life!

Good idea to leave some of it moveable,when I drained my water tanks for winter I had to relocate a bunch of the lead ingots in Broadbill to get the water to clear the decks,may even think of leaving more than 20% movable that's only 156 lbs,the lead ingots in Broadbill are nested in tight with wood wedges and heavy rubber mat against hull and since I've had the boat they haven't moved an inch

Just dump the morter mix around the ballast dry. It will absorb enough moisture from the bilge to harden. But do you want to re-create the mess you just had to deal with?

pete

Lostsailor13 said:

Good idea to leave some of it moveable,when I drained my water tanks for winter I had to relocate a bunch of the lead ingots in Broadbill to get the water to clear the decks,may even think of leaving more than 20% movable that's only 156 lbs,the lead ingots in Broadbill are nested in tight with wood wedges and heavy rubber mat against hull and since I've had the boat they haven't moved an inch

Click to expand...

There is a lot more ballast in your W36 than that! Here is a post from Hull#2 where all of the ballast was removed, counted, and replaced.

https://willardboatowners.groups.io...levance,,Iberia+lead+concrete,20,2,0,37331830

The punch line of the story “Total Number of Ingots: 62. Total Lead Weight: 3224#. "Assumed" Cement Weight: 2776#. Total Ballast: 6000#.”

6 of the 62 ingots were “movable”.

Bill

Any idea what happened to ET, the guy who did that work? He picked up a hurricane damaged boat and totally went through it. Very fine craftsmanship as I recall. He stopped posting after a couple years.