wrote:

Hello. I was hoping that I could get some advice on repairing
fiberglass on a damaged keel. I was out on Lake Erie and lost my engine
and ended up slamming into the breakwall a few times before getting a
tow. It put a 1"x3" hole in the side of my keel. I've read up on
fiberglass repair, including the book "The Fiberglass Boat Repair
Manual."

My question is this. The flat bottom of the keel was not very
accessible, so I just wrapped the fiberglass around and under the keel.
Is this going to cause me any long term problems? Ideally, I would've
ground out around the bottom like I did the top, but I just couldn't
get access without lifting the boat off the trailer.

----------------------------------|
\ (keel) /
\ /
\--------|xxxxx|-----/

(damaged area is the xxxx's)

The boat is old and cosmetics aren't important. I just want a sound,
safe repair. I've applied about 5-6 layers of 6 oz. fiberglass cloth
w/Mas Resin & Fast Hardner. I'd rather not grind it all down and start
over if it's good enough as is.

Pictures of the repair can be found @
http://csilo.com/randomphotos.aspx?f...og/boatrepair/

Thanks for your advice,
Joe

Well you are relying on a secondary bond on a surface that wasnt
properly prepared. At least you are using epoxy so thats one thing in
your favour. Did you abrade the surface as much as you could with maybe
really coarse emery cloth or a coarse woodworking rasp? Did you swab
off to remove dust with either acetone, cellulose thinners or the epoxy
manufacturer's reccomended solvent? Was it perfectly dry before you
started work? If yes to all 3, and you got enough thickness, IMHO you
are golden :-) Are you SURE this was the ONLY damage? be a shame if
the whole darn thing drops off one day when you are hard on the wind.

You read the book, do you have that warm and happy feeling? (maybe not
or are you just here to collect a few "nice job"'s?)

What happens if water gets into your keel? Could it leak up into your
bilge? Was there any void between the skin and the ballast? What sort
of ballast? If its iron or god forbid steel punchings not fully
saturated with resin you could have monster rust splitting the keel open
after a few years of leaks :-(

If I were you, I'd keep an eye on things and check it after any
groundings even if they are gentle. If you want real peace of mind, and
you like skinny water, you might want to consider getting a metal plate
'shoe' made up and bonded on while you are laid up next winter.

I'm about half way through a job lot of GRP repair on club launches and
dinghies (two boats holed, one of which had the keelband ripped off with
5 holes through to the flotation foam along the keel some quite
sizeable, and a dinghy with a foot long split in the turn of the bilge
that currently is 'bodged' with orange silicone gasket compound) and am
sufficiently fed up with it that I am toying with the idea of setting up
for vacuum bagging and maybe even resin infusion. Currently we are
working in polyester resin as we want to restore the gelcoat and dont
really want to wait several months for epoxy to fully cure. Serious
structural rebonding gets the epoxy treatment though. At least I can go
sailing my own boat when I get too ****ed off.

--
Ian Malcolm. London, ENGLAND. (NEWSGROUP REPLY PREFERRED)
ianm[at]the[dash]malcolms[dot]freeserve[dot]co[dot]uk
[at]=@, [dash]=- & [dot]=. *Warning* HTML & 32K emails -- NUL:
'Stingo' Albacore #1554 - 15' Early 60's, Uffa Fox designed,
All varnished hot moulded wooden racing dinghy.