Welcome to the world, keel halves!
Okay, so it wasn't like giving birth. But it's been a long time coming. We really didn't know if it was going to be difficult, how it was going to be difficult, and how it could all go horribly wrong. THAT'S just like kids, right? Caution: Long post. This is one of the few subjects about building boats that I have some prior and pretty intimate knowledge of. Read at the risk of extreme (hopefully not terminal) boredom. We needed to build the keel halves. If you can find a big chunk of lead, you could conceiveably machine it. Finding that chunk is hard, so you don't hear much about machining lead. Mostly, since lead has a pretty low melting point, you hear about casting lead. In bullets, in all kinds of non-load bearing weights, they're usually cast lead. Since these bulbs/half bulbs will be bolted to a steel fin that will take the load of the keel bulbs, and the keel bulbs just have to keep themselves from falling apart, we'll cast them. Lead is t