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Jeff Roy (Jeffr)

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Posted on Thursday, May 24, 2001 - 08:25 pm:   

I am going to have my keel dropped and rebedded in a few weeks so I have started to plan the rebolting.

After I got the 8 nuts and 16 (partial) washers off I just snugged down new nuts while I wait for the keelectomy.

I ran a die over my keel bolts and the new nuts will spin all the way down them freely.

It should be noted that all of the galvanised nuts were mushroomed and the washers were cupped. Most of the washers were cut to fit the well. The aft most nut had two slivers of washers buried in epoxy. I have talked to all sorts of "experts" and all said glavanised is nowhere near strong enough for the loads on keel bolts.

I spent many hours with a chisel and a BF hammer just to get at the nuts. On most of them I used a 1 /16" socket (1/16 smaller than spec). The only sockets that didn't split were the ones for pnumatic impact drivers. I hammered the socket onto the nut for a very tight grip.

I would be willing to bet that S2 poured resin over the bolts, nuts and washers. It was one school of thought to protect the stainless from crevice corrosion. In general SS is a poor choice for anything that is going to be submerged in water. It is the used becuase of it's great strength and there really isn't anything else affordable. Covering the nuts and bolts works until cracks in the resin let water in, and then it just makes thing worse.


Obviously the best solution is to keep your bilge dry. Another good protection is to spray them with a liberal amount of Boeshield once a year. (I will).

Crevice corrosion is the reason you want to investigate any weeping at the keel/hull join. That is why am going to err on the safe side and have the keel rebedded. It is a peace of mind issue too.

I could not find 316 SS locally only 304. I ordered 316 nuts and washers from MacMaster-Carr. That is a great site. I also ordered a piece of 1/4" G10. I am going to make backing plates to put under the washers out of the G10.

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