The metal is smooth, but not shiny. It is super bendable. As soon as I realized what it was, I stopped handling it and washed my hands.
Lead is heavy, but seems such an odd choice for a weight in a consumer device. It must have been cheaper or even free.
Don't worry, lead isn't that toxic. It takes a lot more exposure than the occasional handling to get heavy metal poisoning from it. But yes, odd to use lead as a weight (or put a weight in, perhaps it's a heat-sink?) it's fairly expensive. It could be a lead alloy which makes it more malleable, though a small peice of pure lead like that I'd expect to be easily bendable, but not compressable like clay.
$2k/ton is not that cheap. Granted, it's cheap enough that it's not going to be an issue in these quantities, but it's the same price as the notoriously quite expensive aluminum, and twice what coil steel is worth: https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/hrc-steel
Yeah, but for steel and aluminum you need machinery. Lead can be cut with a butter knife shaped with you hands and melted in an kitchen oven. Perfect for cheap stuff.
not to forget that aluminium is not as dense and in that size it would be too light to use as weight
Mmm toxic oven fumes
I stand corrected! At least in terms of the commodity price. A product made from a raw material can become relativly cheaper through mass production or bulk buying. Also factor in weight re transport costs etc. I've always had the impression that it had a good value, if not mega pricey, at least in a way that made it unfavourable for uses like this.
I may have described it wrong. It is very bendable, not compressible at all really. It is so odd indeed!
No problem, we all have slightly different ways of describing things!
Lead is dense. It is an easy way to add weight in little space. Golfers use lead weight tape on golf clubs to make them heavier.
I don't think lead is clay like. I could be wrong, the only lead I have touch was fishing weights.
Per the Wiki, lead is a very soft metal.
I’ve used lead quite a bit for various things. It’s “soft” for a metal, but it is nothing like clay and is not “squishy”. It is relatively easily bent and will take a rubber hammer to easily form to shapes. I really can’t think of a material one would encounter in daily use that is comparable to the malleability of lead. So “very soft”, yes, but it is metal.
I don’t know what I was thinking describing it as malleable. It is super bendable, but that’s it. I fixed the post now 😅 lol
I've never heard it compared to clay but yeah it does make sense. Lead flashing is probably a little bit thicker than what you have and it's very pliable, it can easily be shaped with just one finger, I can definitely see how it could be called squishy.
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