Friday, August 29, 2014

Keel Repairs II

August 2014                     Keel Repairs Continued
 

After replacing the keel of the bow in 2013 most of the work has been concentrated afterwards on other projects.
This summer a start was made with the painting of the complete under water ship and the hull.
After the underwater ship has been scraped from the antifouling paint and base coats a further inspection was made of the keel.
The stainless steel rubbing stroke was removed from the keel between two supports, it was noticed when the stainless steel strip was removed that sikaflex was standing like little mountains on top of the strip indicating that there were cracks in the wood.
The wood was cleaned and indeed there were some cracks in the wood and the sikaflex covering the bolts was loose. But the things did not look too badly.
A layer of Priomacon paint was applied as protection. Upon further inspection after the paint dried the wood did not looked to good.


Since it looked like that the cracks were not too deep it was decided, to use a router and remove the wood which was in a bad state.
There is approximately 20 mm wood removed till wood was found in the keel with only hairline cracks.



Wood was cut to seize and dry fitted it was slightly thicker and the depth of the groove, to be able in a later stage sand all smooth again with the original height of the keel.




The next step was to glue with epoxy a new piece of wood in the large groove made in the keel. The good thing was that the cracks were only ion the middle part of the keel and not running into the sides. The new wooden strips were hold in place with screws alto to make sure when screwed ion place that excess of epoxy was compressed in the little cracks left in the keel.



When all was dried the new wood was sanded to the correct height of the original keel.
Screws were removed.




The screw holes were drilled out and filled with wooden plug which were glued in place.



All was sanded again and painted several coats with Primacon
In a later stage the stainless steel strip will be glued back again with sikaflex and stainless steel screws.







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