Finished Rabbet, Battled with the Keelbolts

Finished the new rabbet on the stem and sloshed everything with a nice coat of linseed oil. I'm itching to start planking, but this is too good of an opportunity to beat those old keel bolts out and replace them. As the ballast is cast iron, the best replacement is going to be wrought iron (hard to find) or steel. I managed to remove a few of the top nuts, and torqued off the rest. That pretty much ate the day up (sun is setting at about 4pm now). On Monday I'll head back at it with the sledgehammer and exercise some extreme prejudice on the old bolts.

Just to note: the old bolts seem to be galvanized. I haven't seen much evidence of electrolysis, excepting the one bolt that was under the mast step and used as a ground. That one is cooked. Underneath, the bottom of the bolts were packed in with thick tar. It seems to have worked well.