February 2006 - montgomery_boats - mailman.xmission.com

Re: M_Boats: Re: Casting Lead
by LUDLOWD2＠aol.com 12 Feb '06

12 Feb '06

A few yeard ago, I did a lot of bullet casting. Instead of buying the commercial lead casting pot, I melted the lead on an electric hotplate in a cast iron sausepan. I would reclaim old bullets from the shooting range, melt them down, and cast them in an old muffin tin. This left me with disks of lead about a lb apiece. I would do this outside, wearing a leather welders apron, goggles, and heavy leather gloves. I had a fan blowing behinfd me to wisk the fumes away. The lead disks would be great but I would take forever to melt 1000# of lead. Perhaps epoxy is the best bet. You might want to go the the trailersailor bulletin board qand asked charlie jones for a picture of the homemade furnace that he used to mold a keel for a boat he built a few years ago. Don

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lead installation
by Bobbie Mayer 12 Feb '06

12 Feb '06

Thanks for the great photo-documentation! How are you going to close the windows you cut in the keel? Will the last of the lead go in after that or do you just close over epoxied lead? Bobbie

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Re: M_Boats: lead installation
by IDCLLC＠aol.com 12 Feb '06

12 Feb '06

I've had good results with RAKA. However, I don't have any comparative data because that's the only epoxy I've ever used. Steve Tyree In a message dated 2/10/2006 11:49:57 AM Central Standard Time, farreach(a)optonline.net writes: Maybe a less expensive epoxy would work well for your application. I get epoxy for Joe Merton; http://www.mertons.com/index.html He has System Three for about $375 for (6) gallons. There are epoxies much cheaper yet, like Raka: http://www.raka.com/EpoxyPricing.html They have (6) gallons for $265. There are others also which are even cheaper and being that you're using it as a filler only would be adequate. Rick Langer M15 #337

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m23 photo updates
by Nebwest2＠aol.com 12 Feb '06

12 Feb '06

I put a couple of project updates on the site for any that might be interested. www.havasumontgomerys.funtigo.com Thanks for all the help and advice all! Sean

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Re: Epoxy pricing & sources
by Steve R. 11 Feb '06

11 Feb '06

Good point Brian. As a rule of thumb, if you fill a container with spherical objects they will occupy about 75% of the volume. This is a field of mathematics called "sphere packing" that has been researched by people like Kepler and Gauss. It is often encountered in these types of situations where you are trying to combine two materials to produce an aggregate mixture. steve Steve R. M-15 #119 Lexington, KY ----- Original Message ---- Sent: Friday, February 10, 2006 8:08 PM Subject: RE: M_Boats: Re: Epoxy pricing & sources That is correct for one sphere, but a bunch of spheres piled on eachother will allow room for even less resin. At any rate your CG will be lower with lead shot than steel shot. I wonder if it would be better to put the resin in first and let the lead shot sink into it? Brian M15 #421 ----- Original Message ---- Sent: Friday, February 10, 2006 4:17:54 PM Subject: RE: M_Boats: Re: Epoxy pricing & sources Out of curiosity, I compared the volume of a sphere to that of a cube (that circumscribes the sphere) and the difference is even greater than I expected. The sphere fills up just over half of the cube (52%). Of course, those interstices would be filled w/ resin, but since the density of resin is so much less than lead.... Tod M17 #408 BuscaBrisas <=== sporting factory-installed lead ballast, thankfully.

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Re: M_Boats: lead installation
by BILLAMICASR＠aol.com 11 Feb '06

11 Feb '06

In a message dated 2/10/2006 7:38:36 AM Pacific Standard Time, Nebwest2(a)aol.com writes: I plan to layer the ballast in in 2-3inch layers at a time and soak them in polyester resin. I usually use West System epoxy for everything. What if one was to seal off the compartment first, as RG did with his balsa core deck in his NS Dinky album, and then use this thinned epoxy to bed the lead. That being said, I've never done anything with epoxy... so, all of effort may not be justified, Bill From Randys Album: "To protect the top sides, all holes were epoxied. To do this I taped the underside of all the holes and filled each hole with penetrating epoxy. Some of the holes received 3 to 4 applications as it would soak in and disappear over time. Penetrating epoxy is amazing stuff! It takes 24 hours to cure and is light enough it will find its way into any void, nook or cranny. It took more than I anticipated, roughly 1 quart, but the protection is permanent."

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Live Havasu Pics
by Nebwest2＠aol.com 11 Feb '06

11 Feb '06

Want to see a live view of Lake Havasu on a windy day. Check out the marina's webcam at http://170.215.57.242/local/ You can take control of it in , pan , tilt, and zoom as well as snap a still shot for three minutes at a time. If you click the "take control" button and the counter starts counting backwards it means it's that long before you get control becuase someone else is using it. Meanwhile, you get to see whatever they are aiming the camer at. It's kinda cool. Blowing 15-25 today.

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Thanks for the #'s Howard
by Nebwest2＠aol.com 11 Feb '06

11 Feb '06

Thanks Howard, I didn't realize those #'s were on the site! I'll tell Jason about your 155. Sean

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Scap lead and density vs punchings
by Nebwest2＠aol.com 11 Feb '06

11 Feb '06

Believe it or not, I tried the "free lead" approach and, at least in my neck of the woods, that's a thing of the past! I approached all the tire shops. They now save their lead weights and recycle them to their distributors or they have to pay extra for new weights. Battery shops? Nope, they won't give them up either. Seems the biggest difference between doing this now and doing it when the Pardys did is the EPA. They have cracked down hard on industries using lead. That's not to say it cant be done. I just saw a web page of a guy building a large sailboat. He cast a multi-thousand pound lead keel by melting tire weights but had to go through months and months and months of gathering them from the shops that agreed to save them for him (they all wouldn't do it) and then he paid $.20/lb to them for their weights. Then he had the expense in time and materials to fabricate a crucible and molds and pour all the ingots. I also found a salvage yard that had some lead they would sell in the form of pipes and other old odd sized crap that they wanted $.50/lb for. I ended up paying $.72/lb for clean shot. I actually think the shot is the way to go because it will flow in and conform to the cavity perfectly. I got the smallest shot I could so it would compact tighter. After reading Todds post about weight it got me thinking so I took a measuring cup out to the old pile of ballast, filled it and weighed it. It weighed in between 7-8 pounds. Of course this has some resin particles mixed in with it but I tried to get a sample of as much steel punchings as possible. Then I took a bag of lead shot and filled the cup to the same point. I got 12.5 to 13.5 pounds. I'm know that will be diluted some when mixed with the resin but I think the lead shot compacts tighter and we know it's a fair bit more dense than the steel. I had one other concern that also made up my mind not to struggle through the scrap lead scenerio. I work for a fire department. I know (now) that the lead is a touchy subject with the EPA. Smelting that stuff in the back yard, although a 1 time deal, could 'cause me some real headaches if there was to be a complaint about it. Things have changed over the last 15 years and I know for a fact that having a first alarm Hazmat response to your backyard, which is what would happen if someone called in "noxious fumes" or something like that, is not where you want to be when you work for the department! At best it could be an embarrassing and expensive proposition, at worst????......well, we're just not gonna go there. SHOT IT IS! ,$918.00, done deal, good to go, movin' on!! Now all I gotta do is get it in there!

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installing lead and M17 question
by Nebwest2＠aol.com 11 Feb '06

11 Feb '06

OK you guys got me thinking and that's good. Expensive, but good. I'm gonna consider using epoxy resin for the lead. It's gonna be a bit before I install it still so I'll have time to hash it out. If I use epoxy I'd probably just stick with West, I've been using them for years, I'm familiar with it, I already have a can of extra slow tropical hardener and because I moonlight for West Marine I can buy it discounted there. I went out to put the bilge cleaner in.After vacuuming the sump out could see 2 places that my air chisel had actually poked through from the keel cavity. Oops. I hate it when I create more work for myself. So I had seal those up before I put the bilge cleaner in. So that's pushed back till tomorrow. I need help on one other thing that I know someone out there knows. My friend Jason and I have started racing his 17. He needs to get a genoa BAD. The one the boat came with is a 170 mylar that all the mylar has delaminated on. It's not even useable. We got lucky last week in that it was blowing like heck and we didn't need a genny, but we will. So, does anyone have the stock measurements for the basic headsail sizes for the 17? espeacially for a 135, 150 or 155? If you do that'd really help us out. It's probably going to have to be used sails for right now but before he can shop all the used sail places we need the measurements. Thanks Sean

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