Just to pass this over to Howard, herewith his posting I referred to:

"In addition to looking for someone to sand cast a bronze board (never
even got to price...could never find anyone in the midwest who would do
it...they can build 20' sculptures..but not a CB?). I checked with a
local welding shop. They were going to be able to cut a new cb out of
plate steel with a computer controlled gas cutter, from a CAD drawing.
They said that once the drawing was done, anyone with similar software,
which most of these shops seem to have, could cut one out of plate
steel. Having it done locally would probably be the cheapest, to avoid
shipping costs, which right now are sky high.
You would then paint and treat the carbon steel board as if it were cast
iron, with all the rust problems that go with it. The time involved to
measure and draw the board on the CAD program was about $100. Cost for
the board, as I recall, was about $200 for plate steel. Cost for the
same thing in stainless was about $900 or more. Cost for the same thing
in Navy Brass (Bronze?) was about $1,500. You could also do a galvanized
steel board for about $400, as I recall. Don't know how or if
antifouling paint would stick to the galvanized. Somebody may also know
of some other exotic metal or metal treatment that would work.
The most important thing would be to have someone measure an old board,
then do the CAD drawing in the file format the gas cutters use, then
have that file available to take with you on a disk to shop locally. A
bulk order thing might work if the price discount is greater than the
cost of shipping. It might also be best if one shop learns how to do it
right, with the right bevels, etc.
Plate steel is also slightly heavier than cast, and you might be able to
drop down to 5/8", vs. the 3/4" cast, to make it easier to fit in tight
trunks. Especially with bottom paint on it.
I would be happy to offer mine as a pattern, but the board is still in
the boat, and I don't intend to take it out again this year. Only to
drop it down to clean it and maybe add another coat of paint. But it's
for an M17. That won't help the M15 owner."
 - Howard

At 10:15 PM 2/24/02 -0500, you wrote:
>
>Doug, Is Navy Brass bronze?  If a new CB were to be cut from stock using a
>CAD file, would the lead and trailing edges have to be shaped, or it the
>existing board just a flat section of metal?  What about having the board
>cast in a different metal?  Would that be prohibitively expensive?  Thanks,
>Craig
>


------------------------------------------
Doug King
M-17 #404 "Vixen"

Montgomery Sailboats Owners Group Web site: http://msog.org
Email: mailto:msog@msog.org