Pour Your Own Keel

By Mark LeMahieu

For 15 years I dreamed of building a boat that could sail the Great Lakes in relative safety. Looking at many different plans, I always came back to the GlenL Amigo. It was heavy and stable and I could still put it on a trailer if I wanted.

In 1998 I mentioned to my wife of 25 years that I was going to just buy the plans. While costing more than a Tom Clancy novel, I told her (and convinced myself) that the Amigo plans would just be interesting reading.

Once they arrived, I studied them daily, and two weeks later I had 20 2" x 12" x 20' Douglas fir boards delivered to my home and I began to build the strip version.

I once read that there are only two things you need to build a boat-the courage to begin and the perseverance to finish. That opinion is tested any time you tackle a project of this size. Overcoming the obstacles is what will give you the greatest sense of satisfaction.

After college I worked as a carpenter for 14 years and with that experience built five small boats over the next 15 years, so the wood part of building a bigger boat didn't concern me. Just bigger pieces. My neighbors and friends call my wife "Saint Lorraine" because my garage has only housed my car three days of the 13 years we've lived in our home and because me and my four sons' projects are always in the way. The Amigo is 22 feet long and my garage is 24 feet wide. Space problem solved.

I began the frames in my basement and moved them to the garage in May 1999. The fairing and planking progressed slowly but steadily. Donald Smies, a friend who just turned 80, stops by regularly to tease, criticize and advise. He was in the navy during WWII, built or rebuilt several boats, worked as a commercial fisherman along the Wisconsin shore of Lake Michigan, and had a reputation as a wild kid. He had one of the first outboards locally attached to a "hydroplane." One Saturday afternoon he stopped over when my boat was about half planked. He shut one eye, peered down the length of the boat and said, "I think you're gonna make it." He never let on that he was skeptical until that proclamation, but his approval was a real motivator.

Collecting Lead

While the usual problems arose, were solved and put behind as the hull took shape, one seemingly insurmountable obstacle kept looming in front of me. I had this nagging fear of producing the 1,775-pound keel. How to collect the lead, how to build a mold, how to drill holes but mostly how to heat and pour that much lead?

The Amigo plans show an external keel of either steel or lead. There are several small, local foundries but I felt that lead gave me more room to fit it to the hull and I could produce it myself. After all, that's what building a boat is all about.

I began to collect lead wherever I could. When I saw a roofing crew removing a roof I stopped to ask for the ! -lead flashing they were discarding in favor of the newer rubber/ aluminum variety. While an excellent source, it didn't add up very fast. One of my neighbors who works for a printing company told me they had a lot of lead they now used for door stops because they no longer used it for printing. He gave me about 300 pounds. Still short, I stopped at my local auto mechanic's shop and asked if he had any wheel weights I could buy. He was glad to get rid of them, giving me two 5-gallon buckets full of them. I cleaned up the wheel weights by melting them in a 2-lb. coffee can with a short lag screw near the bottom. As the lead melted the steel clips floated to the top and I removed them with a cow magnet (Wisconsin remember). Next I pulled the lag screw and poured the lead into an aluminum bakery tin that gave me 16-1b. ingots of clean lead. I cannot say enough about safety here but will discuss it later. Five gallons of wheel weights produce about 130 pounds of lead alloy, so my collection was increasing but not fast enough. Next I went to a national tire chain. They had lots of buckets. I asked the manager if I could buy used wheel weights from him. He told me the main office didn't allow selling them but winked and said if I drove around back he would give me some. With all that lead so close and yet so far away, I asked if they were allowed to eat doughnuts. That was allowed, so after the steel clips were smelted out of the most recent batch of weights I went back to the tire store and asked if they needed any doughnuts. Doughnuts may not be international currency but they sure are legal tender in Wisconsin.

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