Each GoRuck challenge requires a team weight – 25# for the Challenge, 15# for the Light. Ideally awesome. For Light 002 with Cadre Devin, our weight was a lead-filled bulldog wearing a backpack filled with tiny, red-white-and-blue wrapped bricks. Time for a new team weight for the upcoming back-to-back Challenge-Light in Charlottesville.
Requirements:
1) Awesome.
2) Modular – able to be pared down for the Light without having to take a saw to it.
3) Portable – not just small enough to carry, but convenient to handle while buddy-carrying, crawling, running, etc. Also will need to be passed from person to person easily.
4) Awesome.
Solution:
So – fill the magazines with lead.
After carefully figuring out the internal volume of a STANAG 4179 30-round magazine, I didn’t do any of that and bought a stack of metal 30-round magazines. (The cheapest and worst-rated I could find.)
Now to fill them with lead. First, I stripped out the springs and followers.
Then I melted some lead. Pieces of lead brick left over from previous weights went into the pot.
Holding the magazine in a bench vise, I hit it with a blowtorch to preheat the metal.
The magazines had holes in the base and for the magazine catch, so I held a flathead screwdriver against them as I poured that level. (The cold metal cooled the lead quickly enough to plug the holes. I still had some leaks, though, requiring re-melting and re-pouring.)
I ladled each magazine full of lead, then refilled the pot and let the melt heat up again while the magazine cooled. Finished product – a stack of magazines, each one weighing a touch over 5 pounds.
Same magazines spraypainted blaze orange because I’ll be running around wearing them at night through the middle of a college town.
Don Norum 