| Author | Message | ||
     Jeff Roy New member Username: Jeffr Post Number: 89 Registered: 03-2001 Rating: N/A |
Brad, I tackled fairing my keel last spring. I completely redid the front and leading edges, they were both a mess. The Article titled Keel, Deep Draft by Gary elsewhere on this board is an excelent source of information. I made my own templates for the front 10% of the keel out of foam core, getting the numbers from a text on airfoil design. I faired the middle of the keel be fair and smooth, but did not make any major changes to the shape there. I did fill quite a few hollows and ground down a few high spots. On the trailing edge I ground back the last few inches to lead and then built it up with some fiberglass tape before fairing it all in. My keel was 3/4" short and adding that 3/4" brought the tail to a nice narrow sharp edge. I am a loyal user of WEST System Epoxy. I follow their guides and have had excellent results. You will go through a lot of epoxy as much of it gets sanded off. You can use the Microlight fairing compound for most of it, but I used a mix of Colloidal Silica and High Denistiy Filler for the leading and trailing edges and the bottom edge so they would be more resilient. I had a big hollow between the rounding of the hull and the hull/keel joint on the starboard side of my boat. You should fill in all hollows and grind down obvious bumps. One thing I did that I highly recommend is I got a 3/8" hollow G10 rod from McMaster-Carr for the leading edge. I ripped it in half and then epoxied it onto the front of the keel. I then faired in behind it with epoxy. This is much easier than trying to get the shape of the front 1% of the keel right with just fairing compound. It also makes the leading edge ruler straight and is very strong to resist damage if you hit something. Because the keel is taperd the amount of fairing that creeps around the G10 rod increases as you go up the keel. When I was done, most of the half round of the rod was visible at the bottom of the keel and only the middle 1/4" or so was visible at the top. It is a lot of labor, took me several months, working on it quite a bit. I noticed a HUGE difference in upwind performance. I can now climb up on boats that use to walk over me. The boat does not stall as easily. It was the best performance enhancing project I have done. |
