Christian CG #103 and I arranged a weekend to cast the keel bulbs. Friday after work we met at Christian’s workshop to do the preparation. Christian ordered 320kg of scrap lead from a local wrecker / recycler. We sorted the lead and prepared it in 80kg portions to be sure that the pieces fit in the melting pot. To get clean pieces of lead we had to remove some dirt (silicone and roofing felt). Attention at this point! We discovered some parts that are not lead. Other metal parts and cartridge case from projectiles have been mixed in underneath. We had to sort it out carefully. The following saturday morning we started with setting up the casting station.
We were curious and a bit nervous how we would succeed in melting the lead. With an 8kw gas stove underneath and a gas flame from the top of the melting pot we were able to melt the 75kg in 15 minutes. When lead was melted we had to remove from the surface between 2 and 3 kg lead slag.
Before casting we heated up the cemented bulb mould with the gasflame. Then we pourred the lead into the mould.
After 4 hours of cooling we lifted the mould and turned it upside down to get the bulbs out.
In total we pourred 4 bulbs for our boats CG #103 and CG #66. This was a real succesful and funny day in building our ClassGlobe boats.