Lead Ballast....9mm?

[RedAlert]

Tonight I was watching a program on TV called "Extreme Yachts" shown on the Travel Channel. In one of the custom boats being built, the yard manager at Northern Marine of Anacortes, WA. cited the 60,000 lbs of ballast used in their yacht. Then he pulled up a plastic bucket showing it filled with 9mm FMJ slugs cast in resin! His presentation led me to believe that all 60,000 lbs are composed of the 9mm slugs.

Aren't there cheaper ways to get lead for the ballast?

 

[Certaindeaf]

Range lead is about as cheap as it gets. You're saying he had a matrix comprised of lead slugs and a resin? I don't think that'd be too smart.

 

[Drail]

Giant Claymore. You know, for the pirates.

 

[RedAlert]

I don't understand your concerns. How would FMJ slugs cast in resin be unsafe? Not whole rounds of ammo; just the slugs.

 

[Drail]

They're probably required to be sealed in resin for environmental reasons.

 

[Detritus]

Random weird thought but..
Maybe he worked out a deal with someone contracted to "Abate" the lead in the berms aboard NAS Whidby Island?
I doubt it's part of the abatement/extraction contract that the navy keeps the spent slugs, and frankly even being FMJs I kind of doubt they have any value to anyone but the scrap man. so if the Boat builder offers a few cents more a lb, and you'd be talking hundreds if not thousands of pounds of lead, It would definitely be worth it to the person doing the abatement work to sell it for the higher price.

Like I said just a thought.

 

[RedAlert]

Straight from the horse's mouth....

I was curious so I sent an email to the folks at Northern Marine and here is their response:


RE: Travel Channel program Extreme Yachts 2


FROM:

Andy McDonald

TO:

Ralph Featherstone

Message flagged
Monday, November 19, 2012 8:37 AM
Mr. Featherstone,

Thank you for your interest in Northern Marine. Here is a little background on our ballast:

Our boats are full displacement hulls and have a lot of ballast throughout the bilges. Some 10 years ago a company called Rainier Ballistics in Tacoma had an incredible amount of 9 and 45 slugs, literally truck loads: all rejects. Since then the cost of lead has gone up exponentially and we have switched to lead shot, still encapsulated in resin. The boat you saw on TV had lead shot. The cast bucket is left over from the days of inexpensive reject bullets that we now simply use as weights during construction.

If you have an idea or a source for readily available ballast I am all ears. We have tried boiler slugs and concrete but found lead shot to work the best.

Thanks again for your interest in our company.

-Andy



Andy McDonald
Northern Marine
310 34th Street
Anacortes, WA 98221
360.299.9292 office
360.739.0955 cellular
1.866.864.6992 facsimile
andy.t.mcdonald skype
www.northernmarine.com






________________________________________
From: Ralph Featherstone
Sent: Sunday, November 18, 2012 10:18 PM
To: Info Northern Marine
Subject: Travel Channel program Extreme Yachts

On a showing of Extreme Yachts shown on 18 November 2012, a member of the Northern Marine staff commented on the 60,000 lbs of ballast in the hull of the yacht under construction. The part that surprised me was his showing a bucket filled with 9mm FMJ slugs cast in resin.

My question is if the entire 60K of ballast is made up of the 9mm slugs?? How was this product chosen and what advantages did it provide?

You build a beautiful yacht for sure.

Thanks,

Ralph Featherstone, Silverdale, WA

 

[NavyLCDR]

Interesting. Why couldn't they just melt the reject bullets, refine the alloy and recast?

 

[The_Next_Generation]

Why couldn't they just melt the reject bullets, refine the alloy and recast?

Probably because that would take much more time and effort than either party is willing to contribute. I guess the bullets/shot works well enough as-is in resin to not require the refinement/recasting process.

- TNG

 

[LeonCarr]

I have heard of bullet casters finding old worn out sailboats and obtaining the solid lead center keel for little or nothing as long as they haul it off .

Just my .02,
LeonCarr

 

[RedAlert]

Rainier Ballistics does not cast bullets. They purchase lead billets and draw them into wire. The wire is then swagged into the bullet shape and then plated with copper. A final step is to re-swage the bullets after plating to assure dimensional accuracy.

The possibility exists that the melting of the bullets to recover the lead would lead to environmental issues with lead vapors that their zoning would not permit. Just a guess.

 

[rcmodel]

Another factor is, once plated, a plated bullet has to be cut or smashed enough to pop the plating or you can't melt them and get the melted lead out of the plated full coverage jacket.

rc

 

[Texan Scott]

This is not at all unusual. In a steel or aluminum Hull, the lead would be melted and poured into the keel, but a modern sport yacht with GRP or fiberglass hull obviously wouldn't withstand the heat. Lead shot in a relatively small amount of resin makes a COLD-pourable ballast compound which when hardened will be a non-shifting solid, temperature stable, andnon-water soluble.

 

[beatledog7]

Opening the plating on a heavily plated bullet is not as easy as I would have thought. I had a reloading goof a while back and wanted to add the bullet to my growing stock of lead, and I knew it needed to have its plating breached to be smelted. It took more than a few light whacks with a framing hammer. Was I being too gentle? Maybe. I just wanted to see how much force it would actually take, and if I just gave it one good smack, and it cracked, I wouldn't know whether that smack was barely enough or way too much.

I can see how plated bullets that don't pass QA would be sold off rather than re-smelted, even by a company that casts. A lot of extra work to expose the lead and maybe not worth it.