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Yes, I am a Boy Scout. Yes, I am building a pinewood derby car. Yes, my dad kind of helped me (just cut the basic wood shape)
But I am now at a point where neither my intellect nor my father can help me.
I've got these fishing weights that are kind of egg-shaped with a hole in the middle from the point to the other point.
pic(not mine, but similar)

I have roughed the surface up with a hacksaw and attempted hot-gluing it. The issue is that the hot glue will not stick to the metal! Any other materials I could attempt attaching it with? I have some epoxy on hand, not sure if it'll work.

SirSertile wrote:
Yes, I am a Boy Scout. Yes, I am building a pinewood derby car. Yes, my dad kind of helped me (just cut the basic wood shape)
But I am now at a point where neither my intellect nor my father can help me.
I've got these fishing weights that are kind of egg-shaped with a hole in the middle from the point to the other point.
pic(not mine, but similar)

Spoiler:

I have roughed the surface up with a hacksaw and attempted hot-gluing it. The issue is that the hot glue will not stick to the metal! Any other materials I could attempt attaching it with? I have some epoxy on hand, not sure if it'll work.

Wash them really good and try spraying them with primer, though this bond wont be the strongest it will probably be ok for a pinewood derby car. Only other thing I can think of is maybe just melt the metal onto the cut out portion of wood, it will stick by itself, this is what we did when I was doing pinewood.

Also Epoxy will work for pretty much anything. Try that.

The epoxy should work. Even the hot glue should, if you don't rely on it sticking to the metal. So long as it bonds to the wood, you can run a bead over, instead of a blob under, the weights to form a sort of sling or bezel that holds them in place.

Back in my Derby days, I always used flat lead sheets. You can buy ones that look like a xylophone, which let you snap sections off to tune the weight, or you can just melt some of your fishing weights down in a steel can on the stove (safety blahblahblah). In either case, the sheets were easy to attach (as well as detach for trimming, shifting forward or back, etc) with a pair of small screws. Low profile, too, so I didn't have to countersink my weights to clear the track's guide rail. Worked well enough to earn me 2nd place in the Cub Scout regionals.

Oh yeah, how do I know if hot glue is set? Does it just cease to be hot?

Yes, pretty much as soon as it has cooled, it has set.

 oadie wrote:
The epoxy should work. Even the hot glue should, if you don't rely on it sticking to the metal. So long as it bonds to the wood, you can run a bead over, instead of a blob under, the weights to form a sort of sling or bezel that holds them in place.

Back in my Derby days, I always used flat lead sheets. You can buy ones that look like a xylophone, which let you snap sections off to tune the weight, or you can just melt some of your fishing weights down in a steel can on the stove (safety blahblahblah). In either case, the sheets were easy to attach (as well as detach for trimming, shifting forward or back, etc) with a pair of small screws. Low profile, too, so I didn't have to countersink my weights to clear the track's guide rail. Worked well enough to earn me 2nd place in the Cub Scout regionals.

I tried running a bead over. Unfortunately, it didn't work. I may try Epoxy. Any other suggestions? I've designed my car around attaching these annoying little weights.

Since they have a small hole in the center just cut the weights in half and attach with a small tack or screw while the epoxy sets