keel repair

[peter wickham]

A fg boat I was given has keel damage and has been repaired with some sort of filler, when I started grinding it back to get a good surface to do a better repair I found delamination in the keel and by the time I had gotten back to a good surface some of the keel had been ground away . I thought I may be able to reshape the keel to its original shape with some sort of filler and then apply several layers of matting over the whole lot .Its an older boat so i dont need it to look perfect. Its a 5m guardian.

 

[erikgreen]

Re: keel repair

I'd recommend repairing this from the inside first (if you have a hole all the way through).

If it's just on the outside, then I'd grind back to good glass everywhere near the hole (sounds like you did this) and then grind a perimeter around the hole several inches.. the usual recommendation is 12x the thickness of the repair. Clean the hole and ground area out with acetone or xylene.

Fill the hole with thickened resin(paste or putty) until its depth matches the thickness of the exterior skin. Then layer on glass (fabric and mat, or if you're using epoxy just fabric) starting with a small piece at the center of the repair, then using larger and larger pieces to get overlap. The last piece you put on should be the same size as the perimeter you ground out.

Finally, fair the whole thing over with putty. Gelcoat if you can and want to spend a ton of time smoothing it over, or paint it. If you don't care how it looks, just leave it as-is.

Do a search here for hole repair to find out more... because the hole is in the keel you want extra strength (not just mat) but other than that it's a normal hole repair.

Erik