Restoration of 1981 C-22 swing keel #10580

[CloudDiver]

So the garboard drain plug gives me a fitting I can mount in the hull, made of bronze, is watertight, and I can replace the plug easily since 1/2" NPT bronze plugs are common at any Chandlery. Cool... well, not so much. The plug that came with the fitting is hollow, or at least the lower half is. I needed to be able to drill and tap the center of the plug to accept a 5/16" bronze cap screw to hold the zinc onto the hull. Luckily I found an eBay seller who had the 1/2" NPT plugs that were specifically noted to be solid rather than cored, about $4.50 each. Here is the link to the eBay listing;
http://www.ebay.com/itm/151607029313?_trksid=p2060353.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK:MEBIDX:IT

 

[CloudDiver]

The thickness of the fitting, from the flange to the bottom, is 7/16". My thought was have it flush with the bottom of the boat. My understanding was the maximum thickness of the C22 hull was about 3/8". I knew I'd need a backing block so I laminated some more of the left over 8.5 oz cloth I had from the bottom job into a sheet (10 layers), then cut that in half and epoxied together. The resulting block was exactly 1/4" thick. Once I got the solid plug from the ebay sale it was easy to drill and tap for 5/16 in the drill press. I'm using the CMR-03 size rudder anode made by Martyr that I got from West Marine, this is the same anode that CD supplies in their keel anode kit. Since I can't get 5/16" socket cap screws in bronze I had to open up the securing surface with a Forstner bit (3/4") so I could get a regular bronze cap screw and its corresponding nut driver in there, also accomplished on my drill press.

Here are all the major components almost ready for install;

 

[CloudDiver]

Placing the fitting wasn't too hard to figure out. The flattest part of the hull is closest to centerline at the widest part of the beam, which is just right about where the keel winch is located. Also, to avoid unwanted electrical resistance, its best to have the shortest possible wire run to the keel winch. So I epoxied the backing block just to port of the volcano, aft of the original battery location. This is out of the way to avoid damage, but easy to get to and directly under the keel winch so its a short and straight shot for the wire.

After I had epoxied the fiberglass backing block in place and clamped it to cure overnight I was then able to drill a nice big 1 & 1/8" hole through my nice new bottom job... oh that was such an awesome feeling...

As I mentioned before my initial thought was to drill all the way through so that the fitting would sit flush with the hull bottom. As it turns out the hull was a lot thicker than the 3/8" I had thought. With the 1/4" spacer I figured I would have a total thickness of 3/4" and I would be able to shave it down a bit after. I first drilled a pilot hole dead center in the block, and then carefully started drilling the 1 & 1/8" hole with a forstner bit. Luckily I had the forethought to go slow and keep checking. When I reached a depth that was equal to the thickness of the forstner bit wings I stopped. I had a depth just over 1/2" but still had quite a bit of material left. Turns out that with the spacer added I had 7/8" total thickness! I figured it would be better not to punch all the way through and just mount the fitting the way it is. If I ever wanted to remove the whole set up it would be really simple to just tape off the small hole and fill the whole thing with epoxy.

 

[CloudDiver]

The screws that hold the fitting flange are #6 stainless flat heads x 1/2". Another good reason to not have the fitting flush with bottom of the hull... the screws would come danger close to punching through. I could have ground off the tips, but since I had the total thickness at 7/8" I felt I was better off, so I drilled my pilot holes to a depth of 1/2".

The center hole where the anode bolt would go up into the tapped plug was opened up to 7/16" to make it easier to locate the threaded hole. When I get to mounting the zinc permanently just a small dab of 4200 around the base of the bolt will seal this hole up, although not necessary as the plug torqued properly into the fitting with blue loc-tite will be 100% water tight.

So the fitting was bedded with 4200 and the screws were turned in by hand;

 

[CloudDiver]

To attach the wire to the plug I opted to weld a 1/4-20 bronze bolt to the top of the plug. An alternative method would be to drill and tap the plug from the side for a #10 or #12 machine screw, there is plenty of solid plug above the depth where I drilled and tapped the center. I decided to weld on the 1/4-20 bronze bolt because I could secure the wire terminal with a couple washers and a wing nut, which I thought would be more sturdy and, well, I like to weld!

So here it is with the plug tightened down just a bit (no loc-tite yet). Notice how the bronze plug changes color from gold-ish to Alabama red-clay from the welding heat. I still need to get some bronze flat washers and a wing nut (which will be stainless, that part is fine).

 

[CloudDiver]

And thats pretty much it... Now the anode is bolted on the bottom using a 5/16" x 1.5" bronze bolt. In the pic I am using a stainless split lock washer, but I will replace this with a bronze toothed lock washer which gives better electrical contact. No loc-tite will be used on the threads here, the lock washer does the job and the bolt needs only to be turned hand-firm with a nut driver, not a socket wrench!
I have read recommendations (from the UK) that an anode backing pad be used. This keeps water off the backside of the anode because you wouldn't want it to dissolve from the back. The alternative in the U.S. (because I have not been able to find anode backing pads for sale here) is to apply some 4200 to back of the anode and spread evenly with a putty knife or spreader then it let it get mostly firm before you bolt it on. For the most part this method should make a nice gasket but not glue it on the hull, but it will stick a little.
Later I will add the wire from the fitting to the keel winch, but thats easy... or is it? LOL... hopefully I won't over-engineer that too, I'm kinda beat!

 

[Snowman80]

That rail looks great!!!

 

[jmczzz]

Cloud your remote anode is a very impressive display of innovative design, engineering, logistics and manufacturing, worthy of the custom sailboat modifications hall of fame.
My only question is how am I, a mere mortal, going to duplicate that?
I guess that takes me back to the 2 choices; hook an anode to a wire connected to the keel winch and drop it over the side or (gasp!) drill a hole thru the encapsulated keel.
My friend, I am not deriding your work, I admire it greatly. It is just overwhelming.
Peace and Love, James

 

[spartacus99]

Cloud.

A very long tip of the hat to you Sir. I wish I had 1/10 your skill and half your moxy!

 

[CloudDiver]

Dominate The Battle Space!

Well, I don't toot my own horn very often.... but this time I gotta roll down the windows and blast the sub-woofers, LOL.

I'll start with the bad news, but read on because the story has a happy ending.
Yesterday I did the finish welding on the Stern Rail addition. I had taken it off the boat and did the welding on the table because obviously I didn't want to set the boat on fire again after I did the tack welds.

What I should have done was followed my own intuition and heeded my own warnings. You might have heard me say in previous posts that metal likes to move from welding heat... and boy does it! I had done the tack welds in place on the boat and I thought when I took it down to finish weld on the welding tables that it would stay put. Turns out that was not the case, the tubing bent badly enough at the weld areas that it threw everything off.

In this pic you can see the top rail is no longer straight. Also its obvious that the new feet are floating about 3/4" above where they are supposed to rest. Its hard to tell in this pic with the naked eye, but the lower portion of the vertical tubes below the welds to the horizontal tube are bent inward by nearly 3/16" to 1/4" off center;

A close up pic showing the how much the feet came up;

 

[CloudDiver]

When I realized what had happened, and basically thumping my skull for being stupid, I was almost ready to give up. What I should have done was do the finish welding in place on those upper welds which wouldn't have burned anything... The foot pads would have been finish welded on the table, they wouldn't make anything move anyhow.

So, it seemed like I had few choices. I could cut off all the tubing and start all over again, that would suck. I could trash the whole stern rail... that would suck even more. Or I could suck it up and figure out to fix it... besides, my YouTube user name is 'SteelDoesMyWill'... time to own it!

So I was able to get the factory bolts back into the original feet on the transom, and then line up the and pin the bolts on the outboard sides. The two new feet were still floating, but the port side was close enough that I could put the 1/2" eyebolt in and get the nut to thread. Cranking in down with a socket wretch helped pull the whole thing into alignment a bit closer, especially flattening out the top rail. At that point it was looking better but the starboard foot was still floating and about 1/2" off from the mounting holes. There was no way I could muscle it into position to get the eyebolt lined up. So I ran to Home Depot and got some new heavy duty DeWalt clamps that can be reversed into spreaders. These helped a bit but I knew it was the welds on the horizontal that was keeping everything tight. To relax the tubing and allow the spreader clamps to force the warped vertical tubes back straight I had to do relief cuts on the underside of the welds. I used a fine cutting wheel on my Dremel to follow the weld lines around the bottom half on each side. After that I evenly applied pressure to the two clamps and forced everything back to a point of alignment where I could get the second eyebolt in and crank it down.

Here is the result with everything pulled back into shape, both of the spreader clamps still in place;

A close up of the relief cut on the bottom half of the horizontal tube weld;

 

[CloudDiver]

So now everything is bolted back down and squared up. I used a MAP gas torch to heat up the tube to red hot around the welds to help the steel relax back as it cools to the position it is in. I still have to re-weld the cuts I made, but I ran out of Argon and need to go get a new bottle so it can wait. Any warping in the tube is virtually gone, and at the least is not visible to the naked eye. I checked with a square against the tubes where the bends were worst and I know they are practically gone. After I re-weld the relief cuts I will check again and maybe use the torch to relax the metal some more if needed.

Here is a shot of the whole rail, bolted back to where it should be; pardon my mess of tools in the cockpit!

 

[CloudDiver]

For giggles, here is the before and after of where I burned the gel-coat and fiberglass during the tack welds, then fixed it.

 

[CloudDiver]

So, the moral of the story is... I could have avoided all this trouble if I had finish welded the tubes in place. You have to do this when you do not have the luxury of a fixture to keep everything in alignment. I screwed up, but I stuck it out and was able to fix it.

 

[piedpiperIII]

Really nice work Luke, but only 1 video on youtube? Need to see some boat videos too. LOL

 

[CloudDiver]

Really nice work Luke, but only 1 video on youtube? Need to see some boat videos too. LOL

I still have to put the boat flipping video on there.

 

[piedpiperIII]

looking forward to it. I plan to take videos of my maiden voyage this weekend and it will happen unless it rains.

 

[Alexsip]

Luke. That's one awesome repair.
Great job, I wish I had half the skill you've got

When do you expect to finish the boat?

Alex

 

[philwsailz]

Fully tongue-in cheek:

From the looks of this thread you probably enjoy fixing boats more than sailing them...

Beautiful work man. No short cuts and no stone un-turned...

 

[CloudDiver]

I'd love to be sailing now but the blister repair and bottom job really set me 2 months back. Starting out I had never expected to do that until uncovered the blisters when I sanded off the old bottom paint.
So realistically I am looking at July now. I have just a few major purchases left and money is short, so that may be an issue.
Good news is that W-M is doing its annual 40% off bulk rope sale tomorrow, so I should be picking up all my new lines.

Luke. That's one awesome repair.
Great job, I wish I had half the skill you've got

When do you expect to finish the boat?

Alex