This threat is about how I made a pancake downrigger weight and its mold.
I've made a few cannon ball weights in the past using orange plastic floaters and iron inserts and lead, but was not happy with them. Not heavy enough and the drag and blowback were just too great, rendering these balls ineffective for my application. So decided to try with the pancake weights and see how it works.
Part 1: The moldGot hold of an old 5 L can of contact glue and cut across with a grinder about 4 cm from the base. The top section went to the rubbish bin. Filed the edge to smooth it a bit.
The base is about 18 cm in diameter. I want to make 10 Lb weights (about 4.5 kg). This is equivalent to about 400 cm3 of lead.
Got some putty and after mixing it properly, applied it along the perimeter of the base. Took some time as one needs to do it carefully to have it more or less leveled and smooth. Keeping wet hands helps, as the putty starts getting tacky and manipulating it becomes a bit annoying. The putty will "round-up" the pancakes in order to have the edges nice and hydro-dynamic.
The idea is to cast the two halves separately, one by one, and them join them with s/s bolts. Each halve will take about 200 cm3 of lead. I used a graduated syringe to insert 200 ml of water into the mold with the putty. It fills exactly to the top line of the putty!
After the putty was cured, I drilled 3 holes in the base using a 7.5 mm bit. This is where the bolts joining the two halves will be inserted. The holes, in addition to securing the halves together, will accommodate the bolts fixing the tail - either in s/s or perspex/fiberglass).
Depending on the application, one can use s/s tails and bend them to one side in order to have the pancake weight move away from the boat whilst trolling.
