Thursday, September 29, 2005

Seventh Pig

I had a surprise while heating lead for the seventh pig, when a hole suddenly appeared in the much used saucepan and lead poured onto the concrete driveway leading to my garage. As usual I was using two heat sources: the gas ring and a blow torch, both of which I immediately turned off. This meant I had to buy another saucepan about the same diameter and depth as the broken one. The cheapest I could find that would do the job was just under £10.00! Most were in the region of £18.00.

As I was driving home from the shop where I bought the saucepan it dawned on me that it was made from aluminium, which, when under extreme temperature, can catch fire, as a warship in the Faulkland war did after being hit by a missile.

Nevertheless I went ahead and melted lead in the new saucepan and it showed no signs of bursting into flame, but I did take the precaution of heating it only on the gas ring.

The average weight of the ballast pigs is 11.5 kilos and with a minimum of 10, that’ll bring the fixed ballast to 115 kilos, 65 kilos less than the maximum permitted according the boat plans.

There are three more pigs yet to be made.

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