I'm going to start cutting the top layer of fiberglass tomorrow to get at the wet wood in the keel. I'm doing the work of cutting out the old. I will probably have someone who does glasswork for a living to reglass the stub according to the suggested layup that Catalina Yachts has provided for those with a wet wood core in the stub. Has anyone done this before? I would be helpful to know how it went.
Repairing C27 Wet Keel Stub
- Thread starter Ajay73
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Just completed this repair in May
Steve
The wood filler in the keel was wet but not rotted. I used various tools to remove the FG pan, the majority of cutting was accomplished with my Dremel. I took out all of the pan material to the vertical sides of the bilge. Our boat is an 87, I've read that earlier boats may have had layers of plywood laminated in there as the filler. I found a solid piece of wood, about 2 1/2" deep. Drilled 1/2" diameter holes every couple inches to help dry the bilge. Let it dry for a month and then used a West system epoxy mix to fill the entire bilge. I'd precut some G10 material to use around the keel bolts. Layed these in place in conjunction with the epoxy pour. Waited a week and glassed several layers of FG matte and cloth. Waited another week and retorqued the keel bolts. Wasn't fun work but I'm pretty satisfied with how it turned out. Glad I didn't have to remove the wood as it would have been a little tougher working in the confined area. Best of luck!
Steve
Thanks for the reply Steve. What is the G10 material? I'm going to use the Dremel multi-max to cut the firberglass pan. My C27 is a 1980. I think I'm going to remove all the wood so I don't have to worry about water leakage wetting the wood anymore. I think the wood should chisel out fairly easily if it is wet. I drilled a few test holes in the pan at the front, middle and back end of the pan and everywhere I drilled it was wet.
G10: An extremely durable makeup of layers of fiberglass soaked in resin, then highly compressed and baked. Impervious to moisture or liquid and physically stable under climate change. Most commonly black, but is available in various colors, too.
I used 4 small pieces of G10 at each set of keel bolts (4 in all). They measured about 4" x 5" and the G10 was 1/4". Used a cut off wheel on my angle grinder to cut the pieces. Fore and aft were slightly triangulated to conform to the bilge. A friend at the marina was kind enough to offer it for the repair. Not cheap but super stuff! Had there been enough material I would have made a template of the pan area and used one solid piece in the bilge. Am confident that the repair will last a long time provided moisture does not find its way to the filler again. I also had the infamous Catalina smile on one side of my keel. Am planning to repair that during the off season. I have seen the G10 on Ebay and I beileve Jamestown Dist. sellls it as well.
Steve
I used 4 small pieces of G10 at each set of keel bolts (4 in all). They measured about 4" x 5" and the G10 was 1/4". Used a cut off wheel on my angle grinder to cut the pieces. Fore and aft were slightly triangulated to conform to the bilge. A friend at the marina was kind enough to offer it for the repair. Not cheap but super stuff! Had there been enough material I would have made a template of the pan area and used one solid piece in the bilge. Am confident that the repair will last a long time provided moisture does not find its way to the filler again. I also had the infamous Catalina smile on one side of my keel. Am planning to repair that during the off season. I have seen the G10 on Ebay and I beileve Jamestown Dist. sellls it as well.
Steve
Today I started to cut into my wet core which is plywood. Yesterday I had a local outfit look at the keel sump because I was looking for a second quote for the job. I asked him if he would be willing to do the job if I did most of the wet core removal, just to reduce the cost. He had no problem with that. In our discussion we talked about how to cut out the top layer of glass and the wood stub. He said he would do it with a vibrating cutting saw. He mentioned Fein as the industrial strength model that cost quite a bit. I stopped by a local home improvement store and talked to them about the Fein which they had. They had the same thing in a much less expensive model from Dremel. So I bought a Dremel Multi-Max. $100. I've seen these advertised on TV. Anyway, I used it to cut quickly through the top layer of glass and then made perimeter cuts into the wet plywood. Then I would wood chisel it up in layers. After about 4 hours work I cleared out the first and second section of glass and plywood. It is tedious, labor intensive work but you pick up skill along the way. I will have it completed tomorrow. The first quy I got to quote the job gave me a very good price but he also shrink wraps boats for winter storage among other things and he is more involved with shrinkwrap right now and I'm suspecting that I may have to wait a long time to get the job done. I want to get this job behind me ASAP and that is why the second quote. Second quote was a fair amount higher and that is why I started to do the tear out. All in all once you start into it you see that it isn't rocket science. It's really not that bad a job.
I'm sure that U already verified that your boat is really well supported with blocking under the keel with at least 70 % of the hull weight resting on the keel, & the remaining on well placed jack stands. I would also make sure that the boat is really well blocked fore & aft to prevent any shifting or movement of the keel when the bolts are no longer supported by the bilge floor attachment. I may wind up doing this job in the future. Not looking forward to it. Hopefully I'll leave it for the next guy, & he can curse me, that friggin P.O.!
I use a cradle not jack stands to store the boat. The stub work will be completed on the cradle. Whether or not the percentage is 70/30 I can not verify. Based on what I see it appears that the boat is essentially standing on its keel. There does not appear to be any deflection of the hull where the pads contact the hull. With the cradle there really shouldn't be any fore/aft movement of the boat.
Ajay, here is a link to a thread on the Catalina 30's.
http://forums.catalina.sailboatowners.com/showthread.php?t=130084
I have a 1984 that I redid. I layed up the 3 layers of fiberglass cloth per the Catalina spec, but I also added two layers of 1/2" G10. I really wasn't confident that the nuts going on the keelbolts would have a solid enough bearing on the cloth layup only. I speculate that was an additional reason Catalina went to using plywood as the filler -for supporting the weight-bearing keelbolts. Also, the three layers of matt and roving that Catalina spec'd were not enough depth to repace the two layers of 3/4" (1.5" total) of plywood that I removed. With the G10, it's compressive strength is around 60,000lbs and the bolts are going nowhere. McMaster-Carr on the web is an excellent source for materials. BTW, how are the bolts looking as you expose them?
http://forums.catalina.sailboatowners.com/showthread.php?t=130084
I have a 1984 that I redid. I layed up the 3 layers of fiberglass cloth per the Catalina spec, but I also added two layers of 1/2" G10. I really wasn't confident that the nuts going on the keelbolts would have a solid enough bearing on the cloth layup only. I speculate that was an additional reason Catalina went to using plywood as the filler -for supporting the weight-bearing keelbolts. Also, the three layers of matt and roving that Catalina spec'd were not enough depth to repace the two layers of 3/4" (1.5" total) of plywood that I removed. With the G10, it's compressive strength is around 60,000lbs and the bolts are going nowhere. McMaster-Carr on the web is an excellent source for materials. BTW, how are the bolts looking as you expose them?
The bolts are all good, no corrosion. According to the engineer I talk with from Catalina the thickness will not be replaced but it will be as strong as with the wood. I had thought about adding some additional thickened epoxy spread out around the keel bolts with some kind of a form so that I get some additional support and thickness. I'm going to use epoxy so that will be better(stronger) than with polyester
Nice pics and the job really looks professional. I will dig out all the wood and prep it but I am going to have a professional lay in the glass. They quoted about $600-800 for the job of laying in the glass/epoxy. Not too bad. Had it been much higher I would probably do it my self.
RB, when all the wood was removed what kind of material did you find? What I have found in the C27 is, I'm guessing here, what looks like a thickend mixture of some kind of filler and, I assume, polyester resin. It's pretty hard and is well bonded, difficult to remove. It almost looks like a cement, kind of grayish in color. I'm planning on laying my fiberglass on this material. Is this what you found? When I called Catalina and talked with an engineer about this he said you just have to remove the wood but didn't identify what the remaining material was but that you can glass to it. Did you remove all the gelcoat that was in the walls of the keel sump or lay your glass on the gelcoat after you roughed it up. My experience is that epoxy adheres well to polyester resin in the gelcoat just fine.
The keel stub repair is complete. I used 6 layers of combination mat/roving and West System epoxy. I also fabricated three 1/2 inch layers of marine plywood to take up the thickness lost when the wet plywood was removed. The new plywood overlaps the two middle sets of keel bolts a couple inches on each side of the bolts. I made this plywood an exact fit to the keel sump by setting it in thickened epoxy. I masked the sump off so that it can be removed. On top of this plywood fabrication I made a quarter inch steel plate that overlays the plywood and the keel bolts. This whole fabrication will spread the load over the entire new layers of glass. For the front and back keel bolts I masked off the new glass layers and the keel bolts and poured in a West System thickened mixture using 404 high density filler. This will also spread the load over a wider area. The area covered by the 404 mixture is a couple inches each side of the keel bolts.
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