ballasting mild steel keel

[seasofcheese]

i have to ballast my keel which is 6mm mild steel. i need to source 3.5t of ballast. van de stadt recommends lead. it goes around £900 per ton. iron 180 per ton. now the questions are:
is it a normal practice to pour in melted lead and layer cast iron to save space?
if only pigs or ingots are being put in how would you treat mild steel before ballasting? this place i quite awkward to access(diameter of keel plate holes is around 150mm, it is going to be grit blasted where possible.
would you wax or epoxy for long term solution?

 

[seasofcheese]

 

[PCUK]

When I put ballast into my box keel I used oiled metal stampings in bags of about 25 kgs, quite easy to handle. Poured them into the keel from the opened bags. Can't remember the price or where they came from but it wasn't a horrendous price.

 

[KellysEye]

Before making a decision about lead or something else calculate the volume you have to fill. Then work out if you can use something cheaper than lead to reach 3.5t.

Our steel boat's ballast is a layer of tar, then a layer of lead ingots, tar, ingots, tar ingots etc. This does two things, the tar stops any water/condensation ingress plus it holds the ingots in place. Obviously ingots are easily put in and you don't have the expense of melting the lead.

As I mentioned before the first coat of paint inside the keel should be zinc rich expoxy paint followed by two coats of normal epoxy paint, after sand blasting.

 

[rogerthebodger]

The ballast in my steel boat is steel shot mixed with hot tar pored in in layers and each layer allowed to cool before the next was added.

I then welded plates on top with access sockets. The ballast was then pressure tested to ensure the keel box had no leaks. Hot tar was then pored into the access sockets until full then plugs fitted to the access sockets to ensure no bilge water could seep down between the tar and the inside of the steel keel plate and rust the keel plate from inside.

All this was done before grit blasting and painting.

You need to know that your ballast trim is correct and it will be very difficult to change it after

 

[Downsman]

I had a Robert Tucker design steel Gaff Cutter. I ballasted her keel with a fine concrete mix and layers of cast sash window weights. Laid them in like 'Toad in the Hole'..Inside of keel properly painted first with 3 coats of 2 pack epoxy and the concrete 'jiggled' to remove any air spaces. I left it all to dry for 3 weeks then sealed the top with Bitumen.
Sash weights are handy as they are marked (stamped) with their various weights, so all I had to do to get a fairly accurate total was add the few hundredweight of sand and cement used to make the mix.
Try a demolition firm for the sash weights..