| Author | Message | ||
     Jeff Roy New member Username: Jeffr Post Number: 90 Registered: 03-2001 Rating: N/A |
I wish I had more time to post more on this subject. I took hundreds of photos too. I had my keel dropped and rebedded a few years ago. Nothing you add to the surface of the keel/hull joint is going to make a difference to how well it is bonded to the hull. S2 epoxied the keel onto the hull with what appeared to be microballoon filled epoxy. The keel nuts and washers on my boat were very corroded and I had a weep of water coming from the keel/hull joint. I spent a good month getting the keel nuts off (documented elsewhere on this site), no small task. The first thing the yard did was grind the outside of the keel/hull joint down to lead so they could see exactly where it was and get it apart. I was there when the yard removed the keel from the hull. They had the hull in the travel lift and the keel secured in a special keel cradle. As they lifted the hull the keel and cradle came off the ground! This is with NO nuts or washers on the keel bolts. They had to hammer oak wedges into the joint all the way around the keel to pry it off the hull. They were very carefull and the tear away was minimal. Once it was off they did have to use a grinder to clean up all the ripped epoxy. I have not seen any cracking at my hull/keel joint since I did these repairs. I did not use any chopped strand in my epoxy but did mix in some colloidal silica to stiffen it up more. You have to mix the epoxy very thick to prevent sagging. I also put wax paper on the epoxy after I layed it on. This makes it easier to smooth with a plastic squeegee and prevents any blush from forming, which can be a paint to remove (must be done). When I was done I put on 3 coats of WEST with the WEST brand barrier coat additive for the same reasons Mike used Interprotect. I found that the drawing of grids as described in the article on keel templates was critical to being able to judge fairness. Without them it is guesswork. I drew several extra "vertical" lines on the front 10% because that is the most criticatl and the most difficult to fair. It takes many cycles of putting fairing compound on and sanding off with to get it perfect. If you redraw the grid lines at every step you can avoid having to remeasure it all because some part of every line is visible at every step. |
