The Ballast
The pictures below capture the gist of the story. Bury the cedar stripped wooden plug in a weak cement, sand, and dirt mixture with the whole shebang buried in the ground. Heat up lots and lots and lots of scrap lead collected over several years along with some antimonial lead pigs. The melting pot was a discarded gas cylinder. The lead was flow controlled with a metal bung (spindle borrowed from my bench grinder) bunging a 3/4" hole drilled in the bottom of the pot. When the lead was smoking hot and had been given a good stir, I pulled the bung and let her rip. A few minutes later it was done. Of course then I discover that once the lead had cooled down, my weak cement mixture wasn't so weak. My hands were bleeding by the time I'd cold chiseled and sledged all the cement away. Finally, leaver, jack, sweat, and curse the lead up out of the hole, across to the workshop, and start cleaning up ready for a test fit. What a good feeling to have this job done.