Square Meter: Keel Ho !

After a good deal of prep-work, we have bolted and bonded the lead keel to the 1929 square meter class racing sloop.
The new 316 stainless bolts we installed in the lead casting lined up well with the receiving holes on the keel timber.  They just required a little coaxing as we lowered the hull onto the stationary lead.

The boat is suspended in the barn from 4 points.  We were using cable come-alongs which operate with a ratchet handle.  The boat's owner, Bruce, had a chain-fall hoist.  I had never used one.  They are fantastic!  They are small and are easy to use.  They also allow great control over the load.  This helped with the delicate operation of setting the hull onto the bolts.

Once I discovered how useful they were, I replaced all the come-alongs with chain-falls.
After we did a dry run of setting the hull down, we marked and ground out a few obstructions on the lead mating surface.

Once we were all set, 3M 5200 was liberally applied and the process began.  Here are photos...

The lead keel seen here weighs about 2000 pounds.

Chain-falls are awesome!

Off to scrap.

The mating surface is cleaned up and ready to go.

3M 5200 at the ready.

The holes in the keel timber had some wallow, so the hole was backfilled with 5200 and a 316 stainless  fender washer was added to tighten up the clearance to prevent any water intrusion.

Ready to lower.

Captain Bruce is happy about this step.  The wedge is to help with vertical alignment.

That is a load off!

Winter Laser repair

We got a small repair job on a Laser with hull / deck separation anxiety.
The boat has lead a long life and the owner just wants to get a few more summer sails off the beach on a lake in Michigan.  To keep it above the waves, we needed to refasten about 6 linear feet of the joint.

On a similar repair to this we used thickened epoxy.  But the length of this one made me think 3M 5200 was in order.  It appeared that the initial bonding of the hull to deck in these old Lasers was with just the laminating resin  (ester based not epoxy).
The 5200 took a while to cure in the cooler temps, but after a week and some sprits of water to help with it's water curing properties, it set up.  It is now the strongest part of this hull for sure.

Also a nice curvy and slippery hull.
944!

Bonding the decks to the hulls

For our last class before the holidays, we set out to bond the wood strip decks to the hulls of our SUPs.

The glass cloth had fully cured.  The prep work involved trimming the excess glass cloth with a razor knife.  We then gave the glass edge a light sanding to remove any sharp edges.

Once the deck panel was to this stage, we screwed in the access port ring.  This was fastened with 6 stainless screws and bedded in a small bead of 3M 5200.

The decks were then flipped so we could epoxy in the leash cups / tie downs.

We epoxied the mating surfaces and dropped them in making sure the cross bars in the cups aligned with the wood strips.

Next up was masking off the hull so we wouldn't make a mess with the 5200.

We applied a continuous bead around the perimeter of the hull and along the length of the 5 stringers.

Then, as a team, we carefully set the decks straight down into position and added weights, lots of blue tape and a trucker's strap in one area.

The 3M 5200 is the toughest bonding agent around.  The students signed and dated their hulls on the inside before we closed them up.  Hopefully they will never see their signatures again!

Here some photos: