If you read the FAQs thoroughly, you would have known about the steel rod, but that may take a lot more time than most want to spent reading, and if you're old, you would probably have forgotten what you read when you first started reading there by the time you finish!!!

I used a lead filled pipe instead of shot before I bought an mercury recoil reducer, easy to remove or install and weighs more, but the MRR is more effective and weighs less.

Tim