One year on from starting on Tern’s restoration and today we cross another milestone in this project, by reinstalling the ballast keel. The cast iron ballast will bed onto the original English Elm wooden keel, one of the few parts of the centreline structure to have survived the test of time. We have new wrought iron keel bolts, made by Topp & Co in the UK sealed in epoxy paint. The keel has been bedded onto barge felt soaked in pitch, a good smothering of white lead paste, and a few turns of hemp fibre around the bolts, should stop  water ingress.