The Runaround

The belly of the beast.

A few random things over the last couple days, nothing individually exciting, but not exactly boring, either. I called some tire shops in a last ditch effort to salvage some wheel weights and on the fifth call, someone said yes. All it takes is one, as they say. I hiked over there to a shady part of town (hence, the name of the tire shop will be Shady Tires) where a burly dude walked me to the back of the house and pointed to a metal drum with a very fancy "lead" sign painted on it. He asked what I was going to use it for and I said a sailboat. He said, that's pretty heavy for sailboat. Point, Shady Tire man. If I were indeed planning on putting a 30 gallon steel drum with 300 pounds of lead in the water with a sail on it, I suppose it wouldn't work very well as a sailboat. Good thing life jackets are on sale at the new West Marine.

Before anyone could change their mind, I asked if he would help me load it into the car. This car, by the way, is really a car. It's not even a very big car and at one time was considered a semi-luxury car. It's definitely not a truck or even a minivan. So into the passenger seat goes the barrel full of lead. I got into the driver's seat and said I'll bring the barrel back and drove away, dumb with luck.

Very fancy lettering for a lead barrel, no?

I got home and immediately began sorting the wheel weights. After five minutes, I was thinking eBay wasn't so bad. This is nasty, nasty business. I paused and wanted to really be sure what I was doing, so I went to my bookshelf and pulled down that particular volume of the Encylopedia Brittanica and turned to "identifying wheel weights". Oh, wait, that's what I would've done in 1984. Actually, what I would've been doing in 1984 was trying to hack my way into a blue box to make free long distance calls from one county in New Jersey to another. It definitely wouldn't be building a sailboat.

Who knew smelting could be so popular? There's a TON of information on smelting lead for bullets (or "boolits" as they say) including the pros and cons of different smelters, what happens if you get zinc in the mix, and how to use sand to extract the alloys. Google told me that melting lead is srs bsns in parts of the U.S. for making fishing weights and bullet casings. If one were to draw a Venn diagram and overlap those two populations, suffice to say it's the same family from West Virginia. I'm hiding behind these guys during the coming dystopia.

Best I can figure, my guesses were correct. As a quick primer on which wheel weights are lead and which aren't: if it has raised lettering and has any of the following on it, it's lead: AL followed by anything, P, MICRO, or MC. Anything else is likely not lead, especially those labeled Fe or Z for steel and zinc, respectively. Yes, I realize Fe is actually short for iron but I didn't make up the labeling standard. The small stickies can be lead or not lead and require further testing, which is generally by cutting into it with scissors or something similar. If you can make a dent in it, it's lead.

AL-MC is OK. FE is not, so says Jim Bob from WV.

My barrel didn't turn out to be quite 300 pounds, though. I managed to extract about 120 in wheel weights which when melted down will likely yield about 100 pounds of lead. That plus my eBay cache plus Chris' bucket will yield plenty for the keel pour but alas not enough for the ballast. After this week, if I'm able to do the lead pour, I might just be ready to pay someone a buck a pound for pure lead ingots.

With that sorted out (did you see what I did there?) I turned my attention to some boatbuilding. My wife was working late so I had a little extra time. I gouged a small notch for the boom on the boom gallows and sanded it down to 220 then put on a layer of epoxy. Oh. My. It looks awesome. The pictures don't do it justice. Another layer of epoxy tomorrow and then I can varnish it. It doesn't have any holes for the struts or the tie downs but I'll do that later when I'm sure the measurements are right. The recess is about 1/4" smaller than the pattern but I didn't want to cut into the white. I think the manual has a small veneer in place there and I've seen people do leather but I figured this was the least complicated way out, plus looks the most natural. I do want to research the leather option because this little groove is destined to take quite a beating.

Made the recess with the new belt sander.

Sanded to 220 then first epoxy layer. Looks awesome.

I also managed to get the roundover done on the centerboard trunk, made the little bit of timber between the keel nose block and centerboard trunk, attached the lead containment plywood to the centerboard, and glued down the aft part of the keel. I was going to do the rest of the glue up for the keel structure but it got to be about 12:30 and if I started I was looking at a 2:00 bed time. I actually have a ton of work to do tomorrow so need to be rested; the glue up can wait a little bit since once that's done it'll be the pour and that needs good weather. Did I mention it snowed today? We didn't get the 12 inches (yes, 12 inches) expected but it's pretty miserable outside. Perfect for some spars and perhaps the tiller or rudder or any of the various other mini-projects that this build requires. But I'm really itching to start some stitching.

Once again, little bits of timber taking way too long to make. I knicked off the top 1/3 (flush with the point) to be sure I got enough lead volume in here. For anyone keeping score, this angle is 55 deg.

Roundover on centerboard trunk. This is HIGHLY visible in the cabin and in fact is the spot right up on the floorboards. This has to look good or else I'll stare at it and weep every time I'm about to go to sleep.

Screws on the lead backer.

Part of the reason I didn't finish the glue up is I wouldn't have enough clamps for it.

Update several months later: Notice a mistake. The keel blocking runs up to the edge of the keel board. This should be 1/2" from the top to allow for the cap.