I was fortunate that a friend happened to have about 30 pounds of lead laying around in his garage that he was willing to part with in exchange for a half-gallon of Jack Daniels. I used the burner from a turkey fryer and an aluminum pot that the wife was kind enough to donate (no whiskey trade was necessary).
I beat the side of the pot into a spout to aid in pouring the hot lead and sat the ballast on a scale to weigh the lead as it was poured. I thought this would be easier than trying to cut up a 2 inch thick chunk of lead. It took about 20 minutes to melt the 16 lb block.
Come to find out, weighing it was not necessary because the ballast tube holds just a little over 14 pounds of lead and that was just the amount I needed. I would strongly recommend that you melt the lead outside on a fire-proof surface.
I used the pre-drilled holes in the tail mounting bracket to locate the position for the retainer pin (photo 3 below). The drill press was used to drill at the marked locations with a drill slightly smaller than the pin. The ballast could now be used as a guide to mark the exact location for hand drilling the front mount. Using a set of calipers and a rule the location of the outboard hole was drilled. The ballast was installed and the hole in the ballast served as a drill guide for the hole on the inboard side.
I then drilled the hole that extends thru the ballast cylinder somewhat larger than the holes in the mounts for the pin (which were reamed just big enough to accept the pin). I didn't want to wrestle with that little pin each time I moved the weight. Even with the larger hole in the ballast weight it is still a pretty tight fit getting the pin seated. I added some alignment stripes to help position it in each mount.
