P-weight

It's very easy to make a P-weight. All you need is:

Some lead
A bolt mushroom (Take bolt, add washer, add nut)
Another nut (to use later to hold the P-weight on)
A steel backplate
Some Play-do
A steel saucepan
A fire

Disclaimer: Molten lead is incredibly hot and can burn you horribly. Lead is toxic and its fumes are poisonous. If molten lead meets water, it WILL explode and go everywhere. I absolutely do not advise anybody to melt lead, you do so entirely at your own risk.

The basic process is:
Put lead in saucepan, and put saucepan over fire - A camp fire would do, but I used a Coleman's stove. I also used thick gloves and an old undersuit, just to make sure that I was safe from any lead splashes that might happen.

Watch happily as the nasty grey block weight melts away and leaves a lovely silver liquid in the bottom of the pan.

Pour the lead into the groove in your (steel - alu may melt!) backplate, which you've already stoppered-up with Play-do

Admire your lovely shiny P-weight

Admire the lead gunk left inside your saucepan, and the pretty colours on the underneath of the saucepan caused by the intense heat. Reflect on what a good thing it was you used a cheap pan from Poundland instead of one from your kitchen. (Chucking in a lump of beeswax can help to prevent residue, but is smoky as hell)

A much more detailed description of the process (which I used when making mine) can be found HERE

I used a rather longer P-weight bolt than is traditional, so that my V-weights could use it too.

Other Mutations:

P-weights are versatile things - some don't even use bolts! Take, for instance, the W-weight, invented by "Wacker" and forwarded to me by Daz of Yorkshire Divers:

The flat pieces of metal go over the bolts your twinset uses, therefore the P-weight needs no bolt of its own - an ideal solution if your backplate has no central hole for a P-weight bolt to go through. The same goes for the modified V-weight (the one at the top).

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