Encapsulated keel filling, need advice.

[coveman]

It may be beneficial to give this boatyard a call - they are experienced in doing this with elderly Cornish shrimpers - Babcary Boatyard - Specialists in Cornish Shrimpers

 

[William_H]

I wonder if it would not be better to keep ballast in place with a restraint ie clamped down by floor or similar so that it would be easy to remove if you need access to the bottom of the keel (bilge). However of course that means bottom can hold water. So perhaps polyester resin would be best. Bitumen might smell bu then so will polyester for some time. Re ballast for trim much depends on location of the trim ballast. so dunno. ol'will

 

[coopec]

I wonder if it would not be better to keep ballast in place with a restraint ie clamped down by floor or similar so that it would be easy to remove if you need access to the bottom of the keel (bilge). However of course that means bottom can hold water. So perhaps polyester resin would be best. Bitumen might smell bu then so will polyester for some time. Re ballast for trim much depends on location of the trim ballast. so dunno. ol'will

I thought the bitumen would smell but I've taken the lid off the drum and it doesn't.

I think I might put a 4 inch layer of lead on the bottom of the keel, then pour polyester resin over it. Then enclose it with X2 CSM and X2 WR. Then I could lay further layers of lead using bitumen to hold it in place.

I already have the ballast under the motor installed. I want to make a sump in the first section in front of the motor so that water will flow there where the main bilge pump will be installed. The rest of the ballast will be installed in step fashion up to the front of the keel. My gut feeling is that 250 kg of trim ballast will be more than enough as I haven't installed a 6 cylinder 150 hp auxiliary or anything silly like that.



Thanks for your thoughts.

 

[oz-1]

Hi Turboviolet, i hope this might be helpful to you. I built a slightly enlarged ( from 20 feet to 21feet 9 inches lod ) flicka sailboat. The ballast ratio was about 30%, which meant i wanted the ballast to be as low as possible. I bought 1 ton of scrap lead, a big cooking pot from the army surplus store and 6 small non stick bread making tins. I also hired a tiger torch with a medium sized propane tank. I put a small quantity of the scrap lead in the bottom of the pan, had the tiger torch going full blast, and as the scrap lead started melting i kept adding more scrap and this melted fairly quickly. Any scum i skimmed off with a ladle, and then i would fill the bread tins with the molten lead. My dear late partner would tip out the lead from the tins fairly quickly ( she managed to scald her fingers a few times, bless her ). We made all the lead into these loaf shapes. We then had a system where tap water was constantly spraying the outside keel area of the hull where the lead was going to be. We had put 4 floors in the keel so had 3 spaces to fill with lead. We then started the torch again to melt some of the lead. We would place one layer of the lead "loaves " in the keel and then pour the molten lead over these to fill in the gaps. This continued until all the lead was used up, each bay was filled to the correct level. This meant the lead was in effect just 3 solid lumps. The top of the lead was then covered with multiple layers of 450gm matt and 800gm woven roving. I can honestly say we never had any problems with the heat on the integrity of fibreglass.