Guys and the 8kg kettlebell

I'm really excited about the new 8kg AKC bells! I believe that having an honest to goodness "pro-grade" kettlebell of this weight will enable a yet untapped segment of the prospective kettlebell user market to get hooked. But I don't think the market I speak of is the one that AKC has initially envisioned for these new kettlebells.

8kg (18 lb) kettlebells are stepping stones, for sure, but instead of looking like little paper weights, these are the real deal. I can tell you that this is important to a guy. We pay serious attention to how our toys look. We gladly accept mini versions of sports equipment as we go through the turnstyle at a ballgame, but these are for making noise or whacking an opposing fan, not for serious use.

When it comes to sports toys, we want them to look and feel like the real thing, even if we can't make them do what they were intended for. Given a choice, a 40 something guy trying to rehab a bum shoulder will pick up a kettlebell first by how it looks, and second by selecting a reasonable weight. And it is not just 40 somethings who feel this way. We start young and follow this creed until we croak. For the 50% of human population who say that is evidence that our brains need rehab as much as shoulders, I have but one word: shoes.

So thank you AKC, on behalf of all guys, young, old and in between, who might someday think about picking up a kettlebell for the first time.

Oh, by the way, pink is not on the list of "real" colors. Please consider my paint scheme alteration as a possible option in the future.

Making an AKC bell heavier

I have longed for a competition style 40kg bell for assistance work for several months now. I know that Eric will be announcing the availability of AKC 40kg's in a month or two, but I just could not wait any longer, so I decided to take one of my existing AKC bells and increase it's weight to 40kg. I own a metal fabrication business, so the means for me to make this happen are conveniently available. The cost was basically the 2 hours time and some lead weights that were sitting unused in a corner of my basement weight room. I took some pictures of the process in case anyone was bored enough that they might want to follow along and see what I did.

I happened to have an extra 24kg bell so I decided make it my victim. Eric warned me that he was not sure I could fit enough lead into a 24kg bell to get to 40kg because there might not be enough open cavity to fill. I decided that I would open up the bell and then figure out how to measure the open cavity space before I attempted to fill it with lead. That way, if I decided there was not enough room, I could back out and close the bell back up, no harm done.

I bored a 2.5" hole through the bottom of the kettlebell. The reason I chose a hole this big will become apparent later.
The bottom of the bell turned out to be more than 1" thick. If it were much thicker, I would have exceeded the depth capacity of my hole saw and needed something more sophisticated. But you will see later that the hole saw is a real advantage in that you end up with a plug you can use to close the bell up. A regular hardware store hole saw will cut through something like this only if you are rigidly clamped, use very slow rpm, control the feed and have a way to cool the saw. Forget about a hand held drill.
Inside, the cavity looks pretty uniform. From what I can tell, the bell wall on a 24kg AKC bell is about 1" thick all around.

Hey - now I see what causes the occasional noise when you tip the bell upside down. There are a few flakes of what I will call "casting junk" floating around in the bottom.

Ok - there is a large scale coffee roasting operation next door to my shop, complete with an extremely accurate scale. Time to haul the bell and my proposed source of lead upstairs and see how much lead we need to add to the bell.

I tripped over my source of lead the other day in my weightroom. I have one of those weight vests with all the pockets for those little lead weights, about the size of a deck of cards. I think they each weigh about 2.5 lbs. I have not used the vest for over two years, so I don't mind using some of the weights for this little experiment. As I remember, additional weights were not all that expensive for the vest, so if I need them, I can always buy replacements.

So, If I stack 15 of the little lead weights on the scale with my 24kg bell, we get 40.30 kg. Back down to the metal shop to get to work.

Here is how I tested to see whether I would be able to fit 15 of these weights inside my 24kg bell:

1. I stacked the 15 lead weights in the bottom of a plastic bucket and put enough water in to completely cover them.
2. I marked the water level on the outside of the bucket.

3. Leaving the water in the bucket, I removed each of the 15 weights.
4. I filled the 24kg bell completely full of water and carefully poured it into the bucket.

5. The water level was above the mark I had made earlier, meaning that the available space in the bell is greater than the volume of the 15 lead weights. We are good to go!

Now for the best part. FIRE!

After clamping the bell securely (dumping a large volume of molten lead would not be a good thing), I set up a torch to heat the bell.

Instead of heating up lead in a crucible or pot and pouring it into the bell, I am going to use the bell itself as the heating pot. I was worried that by pouring in lead, I might create air pockets as the lead solidified against the heavy wall of the bell. I need all of the available space in the bell.

Now you know why I bored a large hole in the bottom of the bell. I just pop in the weights like they were going in a toaster. It takes a very long time to heat the bell and melt the first couple of weights. After that, each weight takes only about 20-30 seconds to melt as I feed them in. There is lots of nasty smoke as the paint burns off the bell and the lead weights. No big deal when you are set up with smoke extraction snorkles. Don't do this in your basement, though.

Instead of putting all 15 weights in, I cut the last one in half so 14.5 total. Remember the scale said 40.30kg, and I had forgotten to weigh the 1" thick hole plug that I intend to weld back into the bottom of the bell. Looks like there would be room for another couple of weights, maybe 3 total, but this would fill it right up flush with the bottom. I will guess that the max you would be able to get from a 24kg bell would be around 42-43 kg if you filled it completely. If you are going to make a 48kg or more, you had better start with a 16kg bell or lighter.

Welding the plug back into the bottom.

Grind the bottom plug smooth and grind off the old "53 lbs" and "24 kgs" and restamp with the new weight. We wouldn't want to confuse anybody, right?

Paint job. Silver is pretty cool, I think. Save gold for the 48kg version. Wait, I forgot to mention that it took almost 5 hours for the bell to cool enough to paint!

And the final scale test. Not bad. Now for the hard part - training with it.