# A Heavy Unexpected Find



## adshepard (Dec 2, 2013)

Sometimes while bottle diving you find something that you have no clue as to what it is, at least at first.  In one of my final dives this year (I'm landlocked while I recover from neck surgery at present) I found a rather heavy item.  It weighs five pounds and is approximately 10 inches long.  Although it is rusty I believe that is due to contact with something on the sea floor.  It is actually made of lead.  It has the number "5" stamped on it.  While paging through a treasure hunting forum I finally determined what it probably is.  It appears to be a sounding lead used to determine water depth before electronics made that determination easier.  Alan


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## ScottBSA (Dec 2, 2013)

Interesting find.  Probably not something one would just toss overboard.  Poor guy that didn't check the line probably got slapped around for losing it.  With out knowing where you found it, I would have guessed a window sash weight. Scott


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## blobbottlebob (Dec 2, 2013)

Hey Alan, good luck with your recovery. Glad to see you out there, though. I think looking at it I would have thought that it was a window weight as well.  Usually the lead that I find is silver or black looking. The orange is strange - maybe that's a salt water thing?


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## UncleBruce (Dec 2, 2013)

blobbottlebob said:
			
		

> _*... a window weight...*_


 [font="comic sans ms,sans-serif"]Good answer Bob.  I have a bucket full of them from tearing down our old house.  I use them for... boat anchors of course.  [/font]


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## RICKJJ59W (Dec 2, 2013)

IT is a window weight I had them growing up


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## botlguy (Dec 2, 2013)

Yep! Double hung Window Weight it is. It will probably turn out not to be lead but cast iron / pot metal. Check with a magnet but it may not be ferrous metal. If it truly is lead it's currently worth a fair amount. I'm always scrounging for scrap lead to make fishing weights or downrigger balls. Out here we fish at 130 - 150 feet for Mackinaw or Lake Trout of regularly get hung up on the bottom. Heck of a mess.


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## LC (Dec 2, 2013)

They were in the house I grew up in , never did see one made out of lead though , all the ones I have seen are steel or cast , could be a weight I guess . I would say it is probably cast as I have never seen lead rust . I watch for lead as well Jim , I have various lead molds as well as pour sand castings  .


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## cowseatmaize (Dec 3, 2013)

Hey LC. I have or had about 30Lbs. of lead up in Maine. I'll keep you in mind when I go back up. Most of it was from when I was kid and the tire shop my father went to let me take the used wheel weights home. I melted them down and I think got all or most of the steel clips out. I also had a few dive belt weights.Won't that blow the minds of the PO if I mail that flat rate priority? [] []


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## cowseatmaize (Dec 3, 2013)

> Probably not something one would just toss overboard.


If it was a sounding weight that's exactly what the would have to do.[]Window sash makes sense also, especially if it was a large window.


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## LC (Dec 3, 2013)

Thanks for the thought Eric , I have quite a bit of lead built up over the past several years , some of mine was tire weights as well , then a found a large box of lead ingots weighing a pound a piece . That pretty well loaded me up ., plus I have not done any pouring in quite a while .


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## RED Matthews (Dec 17, 2013)

So our old house has those window weights.  At the Thatcher Central Mold Shop we had metal handles and poured lead hammer heads for pounding on chisels or in mold iron repair work.  I have one of the molds and four or five handles up north.  As a kid my father had a glass melting furnace and a melting pot, because he was a plumber and put cast iron drainage pipes together with oacum rope and pounded in melted lead in the joints.  So I also had some molds for lead soldires - though I don't know where they aren new.  Memories now.  RED Matthews


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## daven2nl (Jan 10, 2014)

Sounding leads will be concave at the bottom.  Wax would be placed here and the sounder can see what the bottom conditions are like - sand, mud, etc.


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