What is heaviest material for ballast box?

[mscheeer772]

I filled myBallast box with lead wheel weights and lead bars. The ballast box is made by JD(Titan?). Anyone guess what the weight would be?

 

[Patricia R. Grace]

I realize this post is from 2018, but I just found it while researching ballast box materials, and it was really helpful. The discussion around lead, concrete, and steel gave me a clearer perspective on pros and cons. For anyone exploring further, newer references also highlight how different dense materials compare in cost and safety, which adds another layer to the decision. Thanks to everyone who shared their experiences here.

 

[404nouser]

For max weight you could fill with platinum coins then fill the gaps with grout mix to secure it. Not very economical though ( my pocketbook won't let me)
For cheap scrap metal and the same grout mix, or without the grout if you want to be able to adjust it later.

 

[SmallChange]

Actually, gold and tungsten are the same, and uranium only fractionally less. They are all half again as heavy a lead, and over twice as heavy as iron. See below:

Element Density g/cm3

Osmium 22.59
Iridium 22.50

Thanks for bringing some comprehensive data to the mix! I have to vote for osmiridium, an alloy of osmium and iridium, which by some references can be 23.65 g/cm3. That's more than twice what lead is.
I have small beads of osmium (the only metal that is naturally blue) and iridium, about the size of peppercorns, that cost me about $40 apiece. Expect to pay top dollar for your ballast box.
I have the Titan box from Amazon, and filled it with large pieces of scrap steel, then concrete, then layers of pourable cement and a topping of FlexSeal rubber. I got its weight to 800 lbs. There's a shallow tray-like area at the top for rope, chocks, or whatever. It's waterproof so staying out in the rain won't cause internal rusting.

 

[WranglerX]

Not sure what is heaviest, but most common easiest to fabricate with is concrete... It's about 150 lbs. per cubic foot... I made a 2x2x1 ft. steel box and filled with concrete and it weighs in about 600lbs. (+/-)

 

[bdhsfz6]

Using lemon sized crushed concrete now which was perfect weight before but leaves a lot of air space and now would like it heavier for the bigger loader. Sand or concrete heaviest thing to reasonably use? Tungsten heaviest thing I could think of but would be insanely expensive, even that much lead shot would be a lot of $.

This won't help you fill your existing ballast box but I made a similar sized counterweight from an old cast iron boiler I pulled from a scrapyard. It weighed 800# but I filled the firebox with concrete and got it up over 1000#. The dimensions are just a bit larger than the size of your box.