I have never really noticed the top half inside wall of my bilge with bolt on keel. Is this glass that should be reinforced? there is a little flaking/rough spots and little expanded section that may have always been like that. Is this fine for the season or structure problem?
Bilge maintenance
- Thread starter babadu
- Start date
From here , I'd say you were in fine shape . That's one dry dusty bilge . Minimal corrosion on the bolts and the washers . THe cracked missing fiberglass /gelcoat wouldn't worry me one bit .
Same
I’d consider cleaning it with a brush and hot soapy water followed by some mildew/mold killer then paint it with this
Don’t paint the bolts, SS needs exposure to oxygen to stay stainless
The keelboat on the right looks sunken in. I sure hope Ranger didn't use wood in the stub like Catalina did
I’m surprised they only used washers under the nuts. Some nice thick backing plates will spread the load over a bigger area and increase the shear strength of the assembly.
I'd take a look at stainless unistrut washers. Cheap and thick. There's probably a joke in there somewhere. Anyways, I'm really curious as to why the washer and nut are sunken into the fiberglass. It makes me wonder what's below the fiberglass
GRP (glass reinforced plastic) is very strong in tension but not in compression. Thin washers under nuts torqued to pretty high values don’t provide much support especially if the holes are a little oversized to accept the location tolerances of the studs in the keel. Since stress=F/A you want to maximize “A” to minimize the compressive stress on the GRP. Thus backing plates versus washers.
The wood core theory is valid but a core sample might be needed to test it. Wood is not that strong in compression either if you ever tightened a nut and washer on a piece of plywood it is easy to embed the washer into the wood.
The wood core theory is valid but a core sample might be needed to test it. Wood is not that strong in compression either if you ever tightened a nut and washer on a piece of plywood it is easy to embed the washer into the wood.