Floors, Headaches, and Ballast

It has been a painful couple of weeks.  With the centerboard case glued in place, and with a dozen or so keel bolts projecting from above, working in my plywood igloo has become a headbanging enterprise.  However, the end is in sight, as I have completed installation of all the floors between stations 2 and 8.  A couple will have to wait until later because the molds are still in place, but I am done for now.  

Floors looking aft from mast step

Another view of floors.  #3 has to wait until mold is removed

 I still have hours of work to do sanding, cleaning up bloops, and filleting, so I will surely have many opportunities to dent my head in the weeks to come.  This week, however, I am back in the comfort of my basement workshop working on a three dimensional pattern for the keel ballast.  
I have decided that I will take the coward's (or prudent man's) solution and have the ballast cast for me by a foundry.  There are several reasons for this, one of them not being that I have a burning desire to spend thousands of dollars paying someone to do for me something that many other people have been able to do for themselves.  

First, there is the matter of getting lead.  Once, you could acquire all the lead you needed by visiting tire stores and gas stations and helping yourself to the discarded lead balancing weights scattered around.  Now, though, the escalating cost of lead (and just about every other metal as well) have made it profitable for such establishments to collect and recycle their old weights.  Disposal regulations related to environmental protection also pretty much ended the practice of taking the old weights and tossing them "out back."  Lead is available from metals vendors, but is currently selling for about $1.50 per pound.  Since Mr. Oughtred calls for about 1,200 pounds in the keel ballast, that represents a goodly pile of dollars.


Second, try as I might, I cannot get my mind to a happy place when I think of melting a bathtub full of a highly toxic and extraordinarily heavy material capable of damaging whatever is left of my aged brain and burning holes through essential body parts.


Third, when I discussed the plan with my wife, (getting a used cast iron bathtub, setting it up on brick piers over a propane flame, plumbing it so it could drain into a mold set into a nine foot long hole dug in the driveway or back yard, filling the tub with lead, and lighting the flame) she observed that this would represent an unequivocal new high in harebrained schemes for me.  Since she has been keeping track of my harebrained schemes for over 43 years, I have a great deal of respect for her opinion.

Ergo, the foundry.  

I need to supply the foundry with a full size model of the ballast.  Since lead shrinks very little as it cools (1/16 inch per 1 foot according to the foundry folks) the model need not be oversized. I decided to use the same technique to make the model as was used a few years ago at the Independence Seaport Museum's Workshop on the Water (WoW) http://woodboatbuilder.com/ for the Class B catboat, Silent Maid http://seaportmuseum.blogspot.com/, that was built there.  The model was constructed of rigid closed cell foam which is available in blocks of 2 feet by 4 feet by 4 inches. 

2' x 4' x 4" block of rigid foam to be cut for ballast pattern

It is not cheap, but is easy to work with, and strong enough so it will not distort when the foundry presses the model into wet sand in order to make a casting mold.  I acquired a block  that was left over from the Silent Maid project from the shop. Because the Grey Seal ballast is 5 inches wide, I cut the foam in 5 inch by 4 inch by 4 foot strips.  The first step, however, was making a plywood template of the ballast space in the deadwood.

1/4" plywood template for ballast

Next, I laid up the strips of foam to make a billet 5 inches wide by 8 inches high by 9 feet 1 inch (maximum) long to fit the template. 

Rigid foam sections matched to plywood ballast template

 Next I glued the sections of foam together using construction adhesive, put some weight on it, and let it dry overnight.  Next, I'll do the final trimming and fairing, and address the centerboard slot.

Foam strips glued, weighted, and drying prior to final shaping