Filling the seams

[1937rogerdon]

I have raked out the old putty below the water line on "Eleanor" my Vertue ,checked the caulking and very slighly harden up. So what do I fill the seams with...Red Lead Putty or has anybody had experiance of the product sold by Trad Boats " No 3 Black Pudding Mix"
(No comments please) which it is claimed to remain flexible in the seams.

 

[peter radclyffe]

what do you want, comments or no comments

 

[1937rogerdon]

Seams

It was meant to be no funny comments re Black Pudding .

 

[peter radclyffe]

you can use red lead putty, with linseed oil, or jeffries seamflex, if its still made, i dont know about the pudding

 

[LittleShip]

Red lead putty with the same amount of glazing putty (cos I'm tight) and a thumbnail of grease to help it spread into the joint. Smooth and clean off then use a primer to prevent it drying out whilst ashore.

Any that gets pushed out when the planks swell can be cut off when you next haul her out!

As the previous post stated I have no experience with pudding mix!

Tom

 

[laurance]

Deprive Trad. Boats of their repackaging fee and use trowelable roofing mastik/cement available from builders merchants or Roofing Trade suppliers usually found off the beaten track in industrial estates.

I've been using this stuff for 25yrs without problems, as have many. Trad Boats are just cashing-in, as I suppose is their right. In very hot weather or in upside down seams bung some ordinary cement in to stiffen it up.

There is nothing really wrong with red led putty except the tedium of mixing it and the awful business of raking really hard old putty out of narrow seams. The black butter, as I've heard shipwrights call it, never sets really hard. The best variety I ever found was direct from the Pitch Lake in Trinidad, W.I. and packaged as 'Lasco', sadly not available in the UK.

 

[Seanick]

Black pudding-slow to mix, hard to get it thick enough, tar leaches through primer, goes hard just like putty! That is from my own experience, others may have had more success.

Below the waterline just use linseed oil putty (hardware store), work in red lead powder(daveys), add more linseed below the waterline to make it sticky, or add gold size or varnish above the waterline to make it go hard a bit quicker. On topsides fill low, prime, and finish with a skim of filler (polyester is fine) before u/c and gloss.

Cheap, easy and effective.

You can buy pre-mixed red lead putty but we have found it a bit 'soapy', and it does not stick well in the seam, and stays soft too long.

 

[laurance]

Leeching of Black Black butter or any tarry substance can of course be held back with alu primer (only the proper stuff with alu flakes in it) or any water-based primer. I have not seen it bleed through anti-foul yet, presumably due to the dissimilar solvents but then, do the fish really mind the unsightly look?

I agree that Red Led powder may be left out of the putty these days, especially above the waterline. It seems to me to be a tradition handed down from the old boys who loved a drop of something carsenagenic. As a bedding mastic its toxicity (white led in particular) probably helps discourage rot spores but is really relevant in plank seams, especially below the waterline?

Any views?

 

[Seanick]

My understanding of adding red lead powder to putty is that it makes it less crumbly, less prone to being eaten by bugs and er, well, thats what you do innit?