Believe it or not, I tried the "free lead" approach and, at least in my neck of the woods, that's a thing of the past! I approached all the tire shops. They now save their lead weights and recycle them to their distributors or they have to pay extra for new weights. Battery shops? Nope, they won't give them up either. Seems the biggest difference between doing this now and doing it when the Pardys did is the EPA. They have cracked down hard on industries using lead. That's not to say it cant be done. I just saw a web page of a guy building a large sailboat. He cast a multi-thousand pound lead keel by melting tire weights but had to go through months and months and months of gathering them from the shops that agreed to save them for him (they all wouldn't do it) and then he paid $.20/lb to them for their weights. Then he had the expense in time and materials to fabricate a crucible and molds and pour all the ingots. I also found a salvage yard that had some lead they would sell in the form of pipes and other old odd sized crap that they wanted $.50/lb for. I ended up paying $.72/lb for clean shot. I actually think the shot is the way to go because it will flow in and conform to the cavity perfectly. I got the smallest shot I could so it would compact tighter. After reading Todds post about weight it got me thinking so I took a measuring cup out to the old pile of ballast, filled it and weighed it. It weighed in between 7-8 pounds. Of course this has some resin particles mixed in with it but I tried to get a sample of as much steel punchings as possible. Then I took a bag of lead shot and filled the cup to the same point. I got 12.5 to 13.5 pounds. I'm know that will be diluted some when mixed with the resin but I think the lead shot compacts tighter and we know it's a fair bit more dense than the steel. I had one other concern that also made up my mind not to struggle through the scrap lead scenerio. I work for a fire department. I know (now) that the lead is a touchy subject with the EPA. Smelting that stuff in the back yard, although a 1 time deal, could 'cause me some real headaches if there was to be a complaint about it. Things have changed over the last 15 years and I know for a fact that having a first alarm Hazmat response to your backyard, which is what would happen if someone called in "noxious fumes" or something like that, is not where you want to be when you work for the department! At best it could be an embarrassing and expensive proposition, at worst????......well, we're just not gonna go there. SHOT IT IS! ,$918.00, done deal, good to go, movin' on!! Now all I gotta do is get it in there!