Anyone hoping for a magical cure for depression or maybe fibromyalgia, stop reading.  This entry has nothing to do with that.  It is interesting though that I saw a commercial on TV saying that fibromyalgia is real.  My computer spell check function disagrees.  I'll have to sort that out sometime.  Suspicions should be raised however, when a commercial states that a disease is real.  I have never seen for instance a commercial stating that leprosy is real or head lice are real or maybe hepatitis is real.  Does that strike anyone else here as perhaps a bit unusual? 

Back to the blues...  The blues I speak of are the blue AKC kettlebells which are 12 kg.  I had two of them.  One I turned into a 29 kg bell as described in this entry

http://blog.rationalfitnesspractice.com/search.aspx?q=irrational

At that time I figured I was done with the lead-related silliness.  I was wrong.  This time I just couldn't help myself.  I was harboring a growing feeling of angst realted to the fact that my heavier bells really didn't fit my hand.  In particular my muscledriver 48 kg bell has a grip that is just too large for kettlebell sport work in my small hands.  It is great though if you want a grip challenge.  The texture also was a bit slick.  That combo was an accident waiting to happen.  That and the fact that I love working on projects led me to this new adventure.    Long story short I made my 12 kg bell into a 100 lb kettlebell around 46 kg for my fans outside of the US.  I think it is 7.12 stone for those interested in that unit of measurement.  If I had to pick, I like the metric system.  It is a no brainer like  Breakin' vs.  Beat Street  I'll take Breakin' any day.  Breakin II though took it to a whole 'nother level.

Not to go off on another tangent but when I was in 3rd grade I vividly remember being told that we would be converting to the metric system completely within a year.  As all of you know, that never happened.  Why?  That was the beginning of a lifetime of being lied to by authority figures. 

Back to melting lead...  I had several ideas of how I was going to do it right this time.  I was motivated by David Zink's report of how he made a 24 kg bell into a 40 kg bell.  He is my idol for a couple reasons.  One, he is a conditioning animal, His work capacity is insane.  Two, he owns a metal shop.  I like metal.  Anyway check out how he did it:
http://poodchucker.blogspot.com/

I was looking on ebay for more lead and I grew tired of losing auctions.  So the other day it was actually fairly warm here (65 F).  A great day to melt lead.  So I went and bought a bunch of lead shot and melted it in my little lead melting pot.  I  used a hole saw to open the 12 kg bell.  It took a while and my drill was smoking like snoop dogg at a block party.  Anyway I melted 75 lbs of lead outside for about 3 hours.  I would pour the aliquots of lead into the bell via a metal funnel. It wasn't bad.  It was quite a bit easier than melting all those disgusting filthy tire weights.  Anyway the only problem I ran into was the fact that as the lead poured in it would quickly harden and that made uniform filling difficult.  That is why I figured I could only go to about 46 kg.  I could have went up to around 48 to 50 but it would have been tricky and I probably would have to have heated the whole bell and use it as the crucible.  Anyway long story short here it is.  And here also is a video of some long cycle fun with the new bell.