Deadwood is the wood outside the keel that doesn't contribute to keeping the water out of the boat. That wood does have other uses including the reduction of leeway, and in this case, contributing a certain Buck Rogers sort of style to the bottom of the boat. As originally conceived Silent Maid's keel ran along the outboard side of the deadwood. A separate piece with the rabbet cut into ran along the inboard side with its forward end ending at the keel. This was a combination of the old style cat with the deadwood stacked up on the keel and the more modern full length batten keel. We decided on the modern approach to reduce the number of seams through the rabbet and to make the overall backbone stronger and lighter.

The shape of the skeg is picked up from the lofting and transferred to a glued up stack of fir with a pattern. While the skeg was still square and not yet tapered the hole was drilled for the shaft. This was a 1" hole that was later widened with a boring bar. This method allows the hole to be correctly aligned while it is being widened to a final diameter of 2". The nerve racking part of the job is drilling the bolt holes to either side of the shaft without having them come through the shaft aperture or out the side of the skeg. Patience setting up and a block of aluminum with a hole bored in it on the drill press to align the drill bit got us through this.

The lead will be poured at a foundry and we are providing a foam pattern to them. Foam was chosen because it is easy to work, dimensionally stable and light for shipping. The cost works out about evenly with constructing it of good quality wood since the foam is easily worked with woodworking tools. Once again patterns were taken from the lofting and checked against the actual keel to shape this. The lead will bolted on after the boat is upright and we need a precise fit.