Screwing the bolts

Heavy labour

Now the difficult and time-consuming part of the work began for the workers.
As some bolts were still sticking out underneath the lead keel, they had to be driven into the hull from below.

Hand sized

Here you can clearly see the dimensions of the bolts and nuts in comparision to the by no means small professional boat builder´s hand. Washer: as thick as a thumb and larger than a palm.

The second boat builder on the left has the pistil from a hydraulic pump in his hand, while the boat builder kneeling on the right carefully pulls away the wooden block from under the heavy bolt.

Hydraulic pump

While workers also secure bolts from up in the hull, a boat builder under the keel places the hydraulic pump underneath the bolts. After this, the bolts are slowly driven up into the hull using pump movements and at the same time screwed from above.

Finished

After hours of strenuous work, the ballast part was finally attached to the keel base.

Once all the bolts were screwed tightly, the work was successfully completed.