Deadwood is the assembly of timbers between the sternpost and the keel that, in a small boat, would be called a skeg. Since the invention of marine engines, deadwood has often been bored through for propeller shafts, and, with the development of the split shaftlog (explained below), deadwood can be downright dynamic. The 27'9" catboat MOLLY B, our example, was designed by C.C. Hanley and built at Baker Yacht Basin. While she is atypical of a catboat (she has always carried a mizzen, making her a cat-yawl), she is quite typical in her deadwood construction. In the course of a thorough restoration, we replaced her entire keel structure, including the deadwood. With its inclined hole for the propeller shaft bounded by a split shaftlog, a mortised and tenoned sternpost, and some very long through-bolts, her deadwood assembly called for a wide variety of drilling and boring techniques. The boring bar is the star of the show. It is one of those tools that intimidates the uninitiated but is wonderfully simple and effective in practice. A boring bar is a piece of round metal stock, straight and true, that is a bit more than twice as long as the hole it is being asked to form.
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