Hi Chris,

After several additional cans of beer, the solution to my problem emerged from the fog.
For most practical purposes, the CG and center of mass of the elevator are the same...unless you happen to have an uneven gravitational field nearby. An example would be a black hole sitting on your workbench.

So, I needed to lower the elevator CG. I drilled out from the counterweight arm as much lead as I could that was located above the hinge line. At the same time I removed lead from below the hinge line and replaced it with Tungsten High-Density Alloy from McMaster-Carr(see attached xls.spreadsheet).

If money is no object, the clear choice is to balance (guild the lilly) with tungsten vs lead.

Angier