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804ScottC

Lead Wire

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As a BP shooter I measure volume, so I never needed a grain scale, but I can see where a good one would be necessary with smokeless powder.

Are the cheap units accurate?

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A US Nickle coin weighs 5 grams and can be used to check your scale.

 

I just weighed 12 inches of .035 lead wire at 2.1 grams on my Harbor Freight scale.

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By contrast 12 inches of .035 "lead-free" wire weighs 1.4 grams.

 

Just for fun, I took a #6 TMC300 hook, with a shank length of about 1.125", and wrapped it with 25 turns of .035 lead wire. It turned out to be about 4.5" of wire or about .79 grams. The hook plus wire weighed 1.1 grams.

 

Weighting options for some big stonefly nymphs:

4.5" of .035 lead wire = .79 grams

4.5" of .035 lead-free wire = .53 grams

Allen 4.6mm tungsten bead = .7 grams

4.6mm tung. bead + 4.5" lead wire + hook = 1.8 grams (that should sink)

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Measuring in grams is for heroin dealers and communists. Get a good grain scale and you'll be happier. You can get them on ebay for very few bucks. The jewelry scales are probably cheapest. I bought five for about five bucks each and were adjstable for grains and grams and carets.

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I kinda agree with Gene L; grams goes with mm, if you measure in inches, weigh it in grains. ounces, drams, pounds, cwt.

If you measure the wire to be 0.889 mm diameter & 30.48cm (304.8mm) long then it could weigh 1.4 grams or 0.0014 kilograms.

Two separate systems of measure. It's akin to saying you drove a hundred miles at 50 kilometers per hour or your fish was 10cm long and weighed a pound or it was 18 inches long and weighed a kilo.

I do recognize that countries using the SI system do not necessarily have communist governments and that a Fiat is not heroin.

 

You may think this is just a rant and maybe it is, but, consider a post that has a few words in English then a sentence in German followed by a paragraph in Russian with quotations in Chinese; how many of us could follow the meanings? If you can switch units from SI to Avoirdupois mentally or converse in a mix of languages, I congratulate you. However, I ask you to keep it simple for those like myself of lesser ability.

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Metrify or petrify. Join the rest of the modern world.

+1 ... Absolutely.

 

Scientific measurements (metric) or body parts (Imperial).

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Thanks rstaight, great calculator.

 

Web site correction: https://www.industrialmetalsupply.com/Weight-Calculator

 

For this example Lead is .0007 # and Tungsten is .0013 # which makes Tungsten 1.857 X heavier than lead.

 

 

The main problem is assuming that "tungsten" fly tying wire is pure tungsten. It is not. The same thing is true of tungsten weight putty. Tungsten is a hard brittle metal so tungsten wire is powdered tungsten with a binder. I would not be surprised if "tungsten" fly tying wire was not much different than lead or even less than pure lead. I've noticed that manufacturer's like Loon do NOT advertise that their putty is heavier than lead which make me think it is actually less than lead.

 

 

 

I just weighed 12 inches of .035 lead wire at 2.1 grams on my Harbor Freight scale.

 

 

By contrast 12 inches of .035 "lead-free" wire weighs 1.4 grams.

 

 

So lead wire is 50% heavier by volume than lead free wire. Thanks for confirming my suspicions.

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Thanks rstaight, great calculator.

 

Web site correction: https://www.industrialmetalsupply.com/Weight-Calculator

 

For this example Lead is .0007 # and Tungsten is .0013 # which makes Tungsten 1.857 X heavier than lead.

 

 

The main problem is assuming that "tungsten" fly tying wire is pure tungsten. It is not. The same thing is true of tungsten weight putty. Tungsten is a hard brittle metal so tungsten wire is powdered tungsten with a binder. I would not be surprised if "tungsten" fly tying wire was not much different than lead or even less than pure lead. I've noticed that manufacturer's like Loon do NOT advertise that their putty is heavier than lead which make me think it is actually less than lead.

 

 

 

I just weighed 12 inches of .035 lead wire at 2.1 grams on my Harbor Freight scale.

 

 

By contrast 12 inches of .035 "lead-free" wire weighs 1.4 grams.

 

 

So lead free wire is 50% heavier by volume than lead wire. Thanks for confirming my suspicions.

 

 

I think you mean lead wire is 50% heavier.

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I kinda agree with Gene L; grams goes with mm, if you measure in inches, weigh it in grains. ounces, drams, pounds, cwt.

If you measure the wire to be 0.889 mm diameter & 30.48cm (304.8mm) long then it could weigh 1.4 grams or 0.0014 kilograms.

Two separate systems of measure. It's akin to saying you drove a hundred miles at 50 kilometers per hour or your fish was 10cm long and weighed a pound or it was 18 inches long and weighed a kilo.

I do recognize that countries using the SI system do not necessarily have communist governments and that a Fiat is not heroin.

 

You may think this is just a rant and maybe it is, but, consider a post that has a few words in English then a sentence in German followed by a paragraph in Russian with quotations in Chinese; how many of us could follow the meanings? If you can switch units from SI to Avoirdupois mentally or converse in a mix of languages, I congratulate you. However, I ask you to keep it simple for those like myself of lesser ability.

 

 

 

.667 cubits of .0019 cubit diameter wire weighs .184 shekels. Better?

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Metrify or petrify. Join the rest of the modern world.

sure, but stay in metric or stay in Russian so that it can be either understood as is or easily translated.

 

What happens if both grains and grams are represented by "g" or "gr" ? Or Gr?

 

How many of you commonly buy your tippet, or spinning line, in meter lengths, mm diameter and kilogram tests?

 

This is a diverse group and I am fairly sure that some who post here do use SI units commonly, some also speak languages other than English at home. Yet to communicate with each other the language should remain the same throughout a single statement or sentence.

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I work in metric. What gets me is some of the trainers at work would say .010 is ten thousanths of a millimeter. Not the correct terminology of 10 micron.

 

I guess this is the kind of stuff you have to put up with when the country is based on imperial and manufacturing uses metric.

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