"Hogging out the bilge"

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

Cleaning out, scrubbing through and scraping and repainting the bilges is my least favourite fitting out activity. I was doing it over the weekend and reflected that old seamen used the term "to hog" for two jobs - cleaning the bilge and cleaning the anchor cable. Very expressive.

On the other hand, I reflect that there are two souces of great expense in wooden boat ownership - one is neglecting deck leaks and the other is neglecting the bilges and allowing stuff to fester around the frame ends and floors.

In my case I have to shift a ton of lead pigs ("hogs" again - they do have a certain piggish quality, as they trap your fingers, etc) and not knowing what else to do with them I pile them on the side decks, scrub them in a bucket and put them back at the end of the proceedings.

Having wrought iron floors, I favour white bilge paint, as if something is rusting I want to know about it.

[seo]

Andrew,
I'm glad to hear you referring to lead ballast blocks as "pigs." The use of the term "ingot" strikes me as bizarre, as if lead were silver or gold.
Another use for "hog" is to "hog off" the excess wood from a timber or plank before getting close to the line, where the rough tools like a broad ax can be traded for a plane to "work down" to the line.
Or that's traditional Maine, anyway.

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

Yes, we have that usage here, too - also indicative of hard unskilled and unrewarding work!:)

I did leave the inside ballast ashore one year, thinking that, with three and a bit tons on the keel, she would not miss it - but she did! The bilge did stay nice and clean, though.

[Russ Manheimer]

Andrew,

Your chore is reminiscent of Davies and Carruthers getting out Dulcibella's ballast after a high water grounding.

"- a horrid business handling the pigs of lead, heavy, greasy and black. The saloon is an inferno, the decks like a collier's and ourselves like sweeps."

I'd be interested in seeing pics of your floors.

Thanks,

Russ

[RFNK]

From Wiki

Pig iron is the intermediate product of smelting (http://www.answers.com/topic/smelting) iron ore (http://www.answers.com/topic/iron-ore-2) with coke (http://www.answers.com/topic/coke-fuel), usually with limestone (http://www.answers.com/topic/limestone) as a flux (http://www.answers.com/topic/flux-game). Pig iron has a very high carbon (http://www.answers.com/topic/carbon) content, typically 3.5–4.5%,[1] (http://www.answers.com/topic/pig-iron#cite_note-msts-0) which makes it very brittle (http://www.answers.com/topic/brittleness-4) and not useful directly as a material except for limited applications.
The traditional shape of the molds used for these ingots (http://www.answers.com/topic/ingot) was a branching structure formed in sand (http://www.answers.com/topic/sand), with many individual ingots at right angles to a central channel or runner. Such a configuration is similar in appearance to a litter of piglets (http://www.answers.com/topic/piglet-1) suckling (http://www.answers.com/topic/breastfeed) on a sow (http://www.answers.com/topic/sow-3). When the metal had cooled and hardened, the smaller ingots (the pigs) were simply broken from the much thinner runner (the sow), hence the name pig iron. As pig iron is intended for remelting, the uneven size of the ingots and inclusion of small amounts of sand was insignificant compared to the ease of casting and of handling.

I guess the reference to lead blocks as hogs or pigs probably comes from this?

On the other hand, a quick search finds that many suppliers of lead or iron differentiate between ingots and pigs but I'm unable so far to find out what the difference is (if any). Mind you, I spent a good 2 minutes on it and gave up ..... Rick

[seo]

Looking at the dictionary definition, I guess "ingot" it is.

Doctor Livingston, I presume?
Ingot, we trust?

nyuk, nyuk, nyuk.

SEO

[Simon R]

Having wrought iron floors, I favour white bilge paint, as if something is rusting I want to know about it.

I have wrought iron floors too, and around the stern they are rusty. One or two will have to be replaced but most still have enough substance. The rusty water had some effect on the surrounding oak but it's limited.

http://www.ceze.net/aaa/stern01.jpg
Yes, the stern post is missing. We're making a new one.

http://www.ceze.net/aaa/stern02.jpg

Once fixed I thought I'd paint the iron with a zinc primer? Any thoughts? I have had suggestions that I should smother them in epoxy or some kind of tar, neither of which appeals.

Simon

[peter radclyffe]

I have wrought iron floors too, and around the stern they are rusty. One or two will have to be replaced but most still have enough substance. The rusty water had some effect on the surrounding oak but it's limited.

http://www.ceze.net/aaa/stern01.jpg
Yes, the stern post is missing. We're making a new one.

http://www.ceze.net/aaa/stern02.jpg

Once fixed I thought I'd paint the iron with a zinc primer? Any thoughts? I have had suggestions that I should smother them in epoxy or some kind of tar, neither of which appeals.

Simon
needle gun, angle grinder , metal primer, galvafroid, when we rebuilt oak and elm narrowboats we put roofing felt gaskets to steel frames, what is your boat

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

Mine get a good wire brushing, zinc rich paint, two coats of primer and then white paint. They have roofing felt between them and the wood.

I've been told that you can't re-galvanise old iron floors if you take them out. Something to do with the salt getting into the iron. The. "GREAT BRITAIN" has his trouble.

[Vinny&Shawn]

We hogged out our bilge and whole boat this spring haulout,our bilge is also filled with secured lead. We did not remove any of it. came across this new product called SporIClean an enzyme,biodegradable cleaner. We apply it to the interior of our boat and bilge, agitated it where posssible let set for 5 minutes and then washed the entire inside with a hose. This stuff is amazing it kills all mold ,mildew and bacteria,and removes all odors. The wood looks brand new and there is no more mildewe. They claim it will not return,I believe it.

We loaned to a neighboring boater I overheard taking to the yard attenbdant about a nasty green reacurring mold in there power boat,she used it and could not believe the results.

www.KillMoldFast.com (http://www.KillMoldFast.com)

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

Picture:

http://i535.photobucket.com/albums/ee352/acraigbennett/DSCF0965.jpg?t=1243923169




http://i535.photobucket.com/albums/ee352/acraigbennett/DSCF0962.jpg?t=1243922450

http://i535.photobucket.com/albums/ee352/acraigbennett/DSCF0964.jpg?t=1243923600

[ishmael]

Goodness sakes, Andrew. Do you do this annually, or are you feeling a bit peevish this year?

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

Annually.

[ishmael]

Come to think of it the only boat I've owned with lead pigs in the bilge was an Alden Indian, and I did the same. I never did get enough lead in the bilge. The design called for 350 lbs and I sailed her for a couple of seasons with only 250 before I lost the boat in a divorce. People had walked off with the lead over the years.

Happy schlepping.

[RFNK]

Andrew
How are your lead pigs secured? Is the sole screwed down or what? Love those nice clean and dry bilges! Rick

[PeterSibley]

Andrew , do you have some cunning way of keeping the lead ingots /pigs stationary and clear of the woodwork ?

[Simon R]

needle gun, angle grinder , metal primer, galvafroid, when we rebuilt oak and elm narrowboats we put roofing felt gaskets to steel frames, what is your boat

Mine get a good wire brushing, zinc rich paint, two coats of primer and then white paint. They have roofing felt between them and the wood.

Thanks, it sounds like we are doing it about right. My favourite weapon is a chipping hammer (with goggles!), then an angle grinder with a grinding disk, followed by a flapper disk. Wrought iron is strange stuff, almost like wood it has a grain. I'll use zinc rich primer.

http://www.ceze.net/aaa/chipping.jpg

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

To answer Peter and Rick, I regret to say that I have never found a really satisfactory way of securing the lead pigs, and, as Jack says, they do tend to "walk" - she is quite a bit short of the amount that she should ideally have.

The cabin sole boards are very substantial - 3/4" ply with 1/2" teak glued on the top - and the obvious thing to do is to screw them down to the bearers with substantial screws with the heads in cup washers.

I recall that the Pardeys, several of whose ideas I have cribbed, over the years, use regular brass door bolts to hold the sole panels down, and you reach under the bearer to get the bolt, so you start from one end and work forwards. This avoids having the screws visible. In my case there are lift out teak gratings at each end of the cabin sole so that would be practical.

The forward end of the bilge, which stays dry from one year to the next, gets used as a bosun's store and is full of spare shackles, a couple of short lengths of chain, etc.

The ballast lives in the main cabin and it did shift once, when we got knocked down, but it just slid up the port bilge, into a space now occupied by lockers and a water tank. That was a "spreaders in the water" job. She bounced back pretty quickly.

We've not been upside down yet.

I'm very open to suggestions.

[PeterSibley]

Without seeing the way you normally stack the pigs Andrew ,it's hard to comment .But I assume you want to keep them out of contact with the planking .

How would a hot dipped galvanised cage that you could bolt /lag to the keel serve? Something that had the facility to bolt the lead in place with a cross strut , something like an old car battery attachment .

Were such a thing of use it would be reasonable to assemble a template from ply "angle iron " and 5 minute epoxy , then deliver it to a fabricator for the real job .

I do like the idea of inside ballast soundly contained !

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

I just stack the rectangular pigs on top of the cement, two deep. I try to fill the bays and then use some odd bits of lead cast in angle iron to go between the floors.

The distant dream is to replace the iron ballast keel with a lead one and do away with the inside ballast.

[PeterSibley]

That would work nicely ...about 4.9 ton on the outside ,your current outside ballast is 3 1/2 ton ?.A big pour though ,nothing to the careful amatuer ! Mine was 2.5 ton and I melted it all in about 2 hours IIRC at the cost of 1/2 ton of pine scrap .

Quite doable Andrew .

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

Thank you for the encouragement, Peter.

At the same time I will replace the iron floors with bronze.

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

I have wrought iron floors too, and around the stern they are rusty. One or two will have to be replaced but most still have enough substance. The rusty water had some effect on the surrounding oak but it's limited.

http://www.ceze.net/aaa/stern01.jpg
Yes, the stern post is missing. We're making a new one.

http://www.ceze.net/aaa/stern02.jpg

Once fixed I thought I'd paint the iron with a zinc primer? Any thoughts? I have had suggestions that I should smother them in epoxy or some kind of tar, neither of which appeals.

Simon

Simon, the extent of those iron floors in the stern is really impressive - somebody thought very carefully about propeller induced vibration...

[Simon R]

Simon, the extent of those iron floors in the stern is really impressive - somebody thought very carefully about propeller induced vibration...

Sorry - I don't want to hijack your thread which is about bilges - and I must say the condition of yours is something to aspire to.

FWIW, I think part of the reason that Glala has so much wrought iron in this area is that she has a cruiser stern. No timber would turn through the impossible angle at the bilge. The way they got around it was to house the floors and frames into an enormous timber, which I suppose might be called some kind of bilge stringer. You can see it in the photos above. The whole thing is then braced with a lot of wrought iron. This is what it looks like from the outside:

http://www.ceze.net/aaa/stern03.jpg

It's easy to see why cruiser sterns went out of fashion, but I do like the miniature dreadnought look.

[RFNK]

Thanks Andrew. I think Peter's idea of a wire screen or something like that to secure the ballast is a good idea but maybe a simpler approach would be to just strengthen the sole board fastenings so that they can withstand the ballast being thrown against the boards, should that happen, and maybe attaching some rubber blocks to the underneath of the boards here and there to prevent the pigs from wandering around too much. I think bronze screws look nice in sole boards, and machine screws can be set up so they run into bronze inserts in frames, or whatever they're secured to, for longevity. Rick

[py]

Its been OK for how long? And now we want to do all sorts of messy complicated things that will only make the annual pigging out more onerous still? If it aint broke don't fix it guys!!!

[RFNK]

To answer Peter and Rick, I regret to say that I have never found a really satisfactory way of securing the lead pigs, and, as Jack says, they do tend to "walk" - she is quite a bit short of the amount that she should ideally have.

The cabin sole boards are very substantial - 3/4" ply with 1/2" teak glued on the top - and the obvious thing to do is to screw them down to the bearers with substantial screws with the heads in cup washers.

I recall that the Pardeys, several of whose ideas I have cribbed, over the years, use regular brass door bolts to hold the sole panels down, and you reach under the bearer to get the bolt, so you start from one end and work forwards. This avoids having the screws visible. In my case there are lift out teak gratings at each end of the cabin sole so that would be practical.

The forward end of the bilge, which stays dry from one year to the next, gets used as a bosun's store and is full of spare shackles, a couple of short lengths of chain, etc.

The ballast lives in the main cabin and it did shift once, when we got knocked down, but it just slid up the port bilge, into a space now occupied by lockers and a water tank. That was a "spreaders in the water" job. She bounced back pretty quickly.

We've not been upside down yet.


Py, up to Andrew I think! Sounds like it's not entirely `unbroke' and actually not too much is needed to fix it. Rick