News from Cygnet Wooden Boats March 12, 2022 at 08:59AM

UIRA UPDATE NO 23. PLUGS, SPLINES, FAIRING, AND WOOHOO 4.3 TONS OF NEW LEAD KEEL! Not all wooden boat building is glamorous, plugging up hundreds of nail holes and splining meters of planking and then fairing it all is shoulder breaking work! So that's why they called them "Lead Mines"! As mentioned earlier TE UIRA lost her lead keel to WW2 and so a new lead keel needed to be cast. There was much excitement when the new one arrived and moved carefully under UIRA! Now the difficult job of drilling through almost a metre of lead and keel timber to attach the 6 Aluminium Bronze keel bolts that will hold the 4.3 ton keel to the boat.