Heavy Metal Work

I love those brass anchor bolts. When I was in high school, my boss was building a sailboat. Hurricane. And I got the job of drilling the 4000# lead keel with through holes for mounting bolts. Drilling lead is a rather nasty job. Kept melding and sticking to the drill bit, if you tried to rush the drilling.

Dunno if this is right or not, but for some reason I seem to recall that the drilling lube for lead is, excuse me, milk???

Kerosene works when cutting lead with a chainsaw or shaping it with a power plane. I've never drilled lead for keel bolts; the normal practice is to cast them in place.

That sounds right to me but I don't know where I read it. Karl

Would have been nice to know that in 1959. I ran a small flow of water in to the hole before it got too deep. Then I just had to pull out the drill bit and remove the lead. Get the Lead out, in other words. :>)