Lead ballast in AS?

[Tim/GA]

I put this in my post about the rebuild but thought some might not see it.  Have any of you found or heard of someone finding lead bars IN the stringers on an AS?  I cut out the final few feet of my stringers today and found that what I thought were pieces of wood were actually lead bars!  I had found them when cutting the stringers as they were insided with the foam and I assumed they ran back to the transom and helped tie it in to the stringers.  Nope, each stringer had a large lead bar foamed inside.  I estimated them at 25 pounds each but after moving them again they are more like 35 each.  Needless to say I found this suprising.  Here they are:

[JimCt]

???

Another Aquasport mystery... Maybe somebody added the ballast to lower the CG to compensate for a tower?

My boat had an empty Pepsi can built in.

[Tim/GA]

No tower that I know of.  Where these were located, I am sure was original and had not seen modification.  That is what made me wonder if someone else had found something like it in a rebuild.  
Sure was a surprise.

[warthog5]

That's a really weird one.

[Seadog]

WOW - never heard of anything like that.

Are you sure they are lead?

[JimCt]

In thinking about this, if altering the CG was the intent, that amount of lead wouldn't have made any difference.

[Tim/GA]

Yep, they are lead.  I had thought they were wood because you could dent them (they were covered with foam), but I gouged out a bit and it is lead.  They are each only about 22" and maybe 3 1/2 inches thick and are still very heavy.  About the only other common thing that would be so heavy and is common would be gold- to bad that is not the case!!

The only thing I can figure is that they were used to add weight to the stern for some reason.  More work on the transom has shown me where some work was done to raise it to 25" but all indications are that everything under the deck back there is original.  

Guess no one else has come across something like this in their AS?  If nothing else, it will lighten my boat and I have 2 very hand weights to use, heavier than batteries and smaller to boot.  Some day they will end up getting melted down for casting bullets I guess.