keel ordeal

Keel and bulb assembly is finally finished.

Actually I had finished the keel already but a small change in my game plans sent me back to the sanding board....Initially, I had primed the keel with Primekote and painted it with white Brightside in order to build a custom sleeve around it for the keel box.

But because I will probably leave the boat in the water, I decided to apply an antifouling paint to the keel. That meant sanding off all finishing job I had done before, applying new primer and new antifouling paint. That is the reason why one can still see some darker sports on the pictures. Those are traces of the Primekote.

Anyways, the heavy bulb (80 kgs) was fixed to the oak keel with 4 stainless steel bolts, nuts and washers.

The previously drilled holes on the bulb and rudder were filled with a thick mixture of resin and silica. Then the bolts were inserted and properly tighten. And because they were slightly longer than needed, I trimmed off the ends with an all purposes hand saw.

Then everything was neatly filled with more epoxi silica putty.

Then it was time for some basic fairing , sanding, painting. Question was how to do this with a keel-bulb assembly weighting more than 100 kgs....Lay it down on my working table and do one side at a time or hang it ?

After consulting fellow builders on i550class.org I decided to hang it from the ceiling. Went to the hardware store, bought a heavy duty hook and a ready to use 8 to 1 purchase. I drilled the hole in my ceiling, screwed the hook and admire in ow my keel slowly raising from the ground.

That is one single screw holding over 100kgs ....Not too bad.

I let it hanging over night to be sure it would hold. As everything was still looking good the next day, i faired and sanded the beast.

1 coat of Interprotect followed by 1 coat of VCTar2 and 3 coats of VC Offshore later the job was finished and the keel looked like this

One thing I must say to all of the future builders who might be reading this is that you really should build a small cart to move your keel and bulb around.

I followed the advice of fellow builder Kevin and that was probably the greatest piece of advice I could ask for. Simply said, I could not have done it without that little cart.