10 Pounds of Lead Shot Will Mash Your Packing Peanuts!

(cross-posted from "pajkossy" (another blog of mine)


I bought this bag of #12 (believe me when I say, that's the tiniest pellet size you can get) lead bird shot. This stuff is definitely not to be used in the course of hunting for food - unless you like breaking your teeth on the way to getting lead poisoning. It's like very small Christmas cookie sprinkles, only made of shiny black metal.

Why did I search for hours on the internet for this stuff?

Only love or anime could make me do something so odd. To be more precise: building injection-molded plastic mecha (robot) models.

I still haven't gotten around to watching Zeta Gundam - the show from which the model I'm currently working on came, but this Hyaku Shiki (that's "type 100" in Japanese) has some DAMN heavy feet now.

Prior to filling them with the lead shot, which settes in very nicely thanks to it's small size, each foot weighed about 1/4 ounce.

I'll update later with their new weight, as well as the weight of the rest of the kit. For now I'll venture a guess that the feet will weigh almost as much the entire remaining structure.

Pix here when I finish it.

UPDATE:
Each foot now weighs about 1.25 oz, so together they weigh 2.5 oz. This is about how much the whole body from the hips up weighs. This should make the center of gravity low enough for more dynamic poses that an unweighted model could maintain.