Carter's Q
Carter, not sure what you mean about the 'keel pocket'. I would not use anything as brittle as epoxy to bond the lead to the fibreglass. First of all, it's got to be chemically compatible with fibreglass. Epoxy is only mechanically compatible and then only if you open up the pores of the fibreglass enough for it to make a physical 'lock' on the roughened surface. Not sure you'll have room to do that with a grinder between the lead and the boat hovering in slings above it. If you need to fill a bit of the void to make the lead fit better against the fibreglass, that's a different story. However I would lean towards a polyster-based product, probably the 'mish-mash' we used to use or something else using regular resin and a lot of microballoons. Really it should be 'glassed over again so the lead will bed directly against strong 'glass and not filler (brittle microballoons). I think this is what I have on my boat-- I am currently chipping out a lot of brick-red stuff with the consistency of bad terracotta (consistent with being microballoons) that was used to fill the crack around the top of the lead. This boat's PO used something that has never kicked off-- looks like rubber, is sticky like 5200, will not separate from itself (worse than mozzarella), and leaked like a sieve. I've got to take it all out (a job calling for a Dremel tool on steroids) and get the seam super-clean and super-smooth with a piano wire before putting it back together with 5200. When it comes to fairing in the outside, I'd just trowel up 5200 using a wide putty blade. (BTW-- there have been a lot of very radical uses for 5200 lately-- people are actually smearing the sides of old workboats with drumloads of 5200 and then just wrapping cedar over it. No epoxy at all.) I would definitely trust 5200, if properly applied, to fair up smoothly enough to be able to paint over it. In fact that's one of its intended applications. I'll have pics of Diana on here as it progresses. EMail me if you need more specific clarification, Carter. JC 2 jcomet@aol.com
