The metal is smooth, but not shiny. It is super bendable. As soon as I realized what it was, I stopped handling it and washed my hands.

Lead is heavy, but seems such an odd choice for a weight in a consumer device. It must have been cheaper or even free.

  • @Redfox8@feddit.uk
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    417 months ago

    Don’t worry, lead isn’t that toxic. It takes a lot more exposure than the occasional handling to get heavy metal poisoning from it. But yes, odd to use lead as a weight (or put a weight in, perhaps it’s a heat-sink?) it’s fairly expensive. It could be a lead alloy which makes it more malleable, though a small peice of pure lead like that I’d expect to be easily bendable, but not compressable like clay.

        • @LouNeko@lemmy.world
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          47 months ago

          Yeah, but for steel and aluminum you need machinery. Lead can be cut with a butter knife shaped with you hands and melted in an kitchen oven. Perfect for cheap stuff.

      • @Redfox8@feddit.uk
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        27 months ago

        I stand corrected! At least in terms of the commodity price. A product made from a raw material can become relativly cheaper through mass production or bulk buying. Also factor in weight re transport costs etc. I’ve always had the impression that it had a good value, if not mega pricey, at least in a way that made it unfavourable for uses like this.

    • JessicaOP
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      37 months ago

      I may have described it wrong. It is very bendable, not compressible at all really. It is so odd indeed!

  • Sal
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    117 months ago

    I don’t think lead is clay like. I could be wrong, the only lead I have touch was fishing weights.

    • JessicaOP
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      67 months ago

      Per the Wiki, lead is a very soft metal.

      • @RememberTheApollo@lemmy.world
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        57 months ago

        I’ve used lead quite a bit for various things. It’s “soft” for a metal, but it is nothing like clay and is not “squishy”. It is relatively easily bent and will take a rubber hammer to easily form to shapes. I really can’t think of a material one would encounter in daily use that is comparable to the malleability of lead. So “very soft”, yes, but it is metal.

        • JessicaOP
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          17 months ago

          I don’t know what I was thinking describing it as malleable. It is super bendable, but that’s it. I fixed the post now 😅 lol

          • @Selmafudd@lemmy.world
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            27 months ago

            I’ve never heard it compared to clay but yeah it does make sense. Lead flashing is probably a little bit thicker than what you have and it’s very pliable, it can easily be shaped with just one finger, I can definitely see how it could be called squishy.

    • JessicaOP
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      27 months ago

      Definitely not like any EMF shield I’ve ever seen. It’s definitely a very soft metal.

      • @BobaFuttbucker@reddthat.com
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        37 months ago

        Did the battery have pull tabs at all? It could also be there to hold the battery in place if there were none. That isn’t uncommon either.

        • JessicaOP
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          27 months ago

          It had a strip of double stick tape under it.

          • @BobaFuttbucker@reddthat.com
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            27 months ago

            Ok yeah so that sounds like a mounting bracket for the battery itself. That’s normal, probably not lead.

            Genuine Apple batteries will have a pull tab for safely removing the battery, this appears to be a less sexy version of that.