Boat Forum / Building / May 2009

I am to the stage of casting the keel for my project.  Please comment
on my proposed method of making the mold:
--make a male plug out of styrofoam with a thin coat of bondo for
fairing and smoothing.

What do you builders recommend for finishing plywood that will be exposed to
splash, but not submerged?
I'm rebuilding the upper works of a very old pontoon boat, and will replace
the rails/sides with plywood panels in wood frames. Not sure what

text.news.virginmedia.com has slowed to the point that downloading 300
headers takes about 5mins. A 99kb binary on virginmedia.com takes about 90
secs. It has been like this for a few weeks. Is it just me?
Tim W

I need to replace the numbers on our aluminum johnboat.  The sticky stuff
from the old numbers is still there.  I don't think that I want to put new
numbers  on this.  Any ideas about how to remove the sticky stuff to give a
clean surface for new?

Last year when I hauled out my steel boat I found many paint blisters
on the bottom. When I opened them, clear grey steel came out
underneath. I then suspected a ground leak causing electrolysis to be
the problem. There was indeed a leak on the RF ground of the shortwave