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- Many welding supply shops sell TIG welding electrodes that are tungsten. The usual size is 1/8-inch diameter and 7 inches long, and they are usually 98% or 99% pure (they are doped with another ingredient to improve their functioning). Cost is $30-$40 for ten pieces. As to their general toxicity, you’d have to call up a welding shop and ask about that, I don’t know. They should certainly be able to get you MSDS info on them.
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- Many welding supply shops sell TIG welding electrodes that are tungsten. The usual size is 1/8-inch diameter and 7 inches long, and they are usually 98% or 99% pure (they are doped with another ingredient to improve their functioning). Cost is $30-$40 for ten pieces. As to their general toxicity, you’d have to call up a welding shop and ask about that, I don’t know. They should certainly be able to get you MSDS info on them.
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Even if the metal isn’t toxic, if a lot of people are handling it they should still wash their hands so they don’t spread germs around - you don’t want to know how “toxic” human sweat and fingergrease can be!
I’ve bought Tantalum wire for an electrostatic discharge deburring machine. Really expensive at the retail level, if you can even find any.
I’d go with the lead.
As long as you’re no ingesting or inhaling it lead is quite safe. If not there would be a lot of lead poisoned fisherman. Just go to a saltwater fishing store and get a globular fishing weight. That’s all you need.
LEAD is OK - with a little care. Melt Pb in a small (aluminum) pot or pan in well ventilated area, beware breathing the fumes. After cooling & popping it out (do not use the pot for cooking thereafter) , wear rubber gloves, coat lead with polyurethane or comparable sealer (volume and mass of this is insignificant compared to the lead). I happen to have lead ingots (about 100 g each) available - for costs of S&H. Or I could melt them to your specs, coat them too @ my costs.
Incidentally, England banned lead shot for fishing sinkers YEARS ago: fish and fowl were swallowing Pb and contributing it to the food chain!
If you dont necessarily want a pure element you can consider alloys. I havent time to look up the properties, but there is Fields metal melts around 60 C. There is a eutectic alloy of Bi-Pb-Sn that melts at around 100C. This have density aroun 10g/cc.
Woods metal contains Cd, so prob. not a good thing.
A 62Sn 38Pb eutectic melts at 183°C.
Expensive, but an alloy of 80% gold 20% tin melts at around 280°C.
From this page (from yoyodyne’s link on the other page, you can get the .pdf catalog. It looks like their tungsten cylinder goes for about $275 (page 19 of the catalog). A 2 inch long cylinder weighs 1kg. That would be cool!
One place to get lead in quantity cheap is to talk to a garage or tire place, and get some discarded wheel weights. When you melt the lead, the steel clips float to the surface and you can skim them off. Years ago, I remember my father was into casting bullets for a while, and a garage owner he knew just gave him a huge pile of the things.
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That site lists gallium for $45/10g, which seems to be about 1.6 cc, if I did my arithmetic right. I’ve always wanted some. Now, concerning toxicities - how safe is it to let the gallium melt into a puddle in your hand, and so on? The catalog entry mentions that it will do so, seemingly implying that it’s OK, but I notice they have the note that “larger quantities require international hazmat shipping”.
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there used to be some tantalum drops around my machine shop about 3" diameter and 1/2" length. i will look for them.
How about Uranium? U-238, not U-235 
ommonly known as Depleted Uranium. It’s twice as dense as lead and safe in the solid form.
http://web.ead.anl.gov/uranium/guide/ucompound/whatisu/index.cfm
just wax the lead really well if you’re worried about oxide dust. Better yet, spray it with clear polyurethane.
damn, someone thew it in with the scrap metal thinking they were just ordinary drops. man if i had known it was that expensive i would have set it aside. sorry man.