The second stage of the rebuild involves reapiring the forward end of the keel.  The picture above shows what the forward few feet of the keel looked like when I bought the boat in September 2007.  The dark area is rotted to the point that a good deal of the keel rabbet is gone.  I decided to tackle this repair after I finished the engine room rebuild (Engine Room Rebuild).  The first step in the keel repair is to remove the garboards so I can see just how bad the rot is.  So, in October 2008, I set to work to remove the garboards.  That task too about seven hours, because I took them off in one piece so I could either put them back after refurbishing them, or use the old garboards as patterns for new wood.

I decided to take the port garboard off first.  The actual garboards consist of two 16' long planks on each side.  Given the apparent extend of rot on the forward end of the keel, I decided to only remove eight feet of the forward plank.  These planks are 1" thick and just under 12" wide.  Eight feet back from the bow, the garboards have almost no curvature, which will make scarfing new wood in easy.  The boat was originally fastened with iron boat nails.  The boat had also been refastened at least twice with bronze screws.  The older screws were slotted and the newer screws were phillips.  It was easy to pick out the older screws because they had 5/8" bungs and the newer screws had 1/2" bungs.  The iron boat nails were almost completely corroded away.  Where there was still some intact metal, I drilled the screws out with a 5/16" bit.  When I removed the bungs over the screws I discovered that the slots on all the older screws were filled with a very tough, rock hard bedding compound that had to be chipped out of the slots.  The nine frames had a total of 33 old screws.  All the newer phillips screws were in the floors rather than the frames.  The phillips screws came right out.  After laboriously chipping the compound out of the slots, all but three of the older screws also came out via a combination of turning and prying simultaneously.

The picture above shows the port garboard plank after I removed it.  You can see that the keel rabbet is essentially completely rotted away for about 20".  In addition, the frame ends are also almost completely wasted.  When I saw the extent of the rot in the frame ends I was pretty discouraged until I went on board the boat and removed some of the ceiling in the bow.  To my relief, I found that the rot in the frames extends only about 12" to 15" up each frame.  Above that the frames are completely sound.  Consequently, after I repair the keel, I will only have to scarf in about 2' of new wood on each of the forward frames.

We had a couple of days of rain after I removed the port garboard.  The weather finally cleared on the 18th, so I went out that morning and removed the starboard garboard plank.  The situation on this side is the same as on the port side.  The keel rabbet is gone for about 20" and the frame ends are pretty much totally rotted away.  When I took this plank off, I found that the keel rabbet had been replaced with a thick layer of bedding compound of some sort.  I was able to break the compound off the plank without damaging the plank.  However, I will be replacing the plank I removed with new wood because of the extensive iron sickness that grinding the bottom paint off revealed.

The red lines in the picture above show approximately where I will be cutting the keel off.  Based on sounding the keel with a screw driver both inside and outside the boat, removing that much wood will leave me with sound wood.  Right now it looks like I will be replacing just under 7' of the keel.  In this area the keel is 7" high by 3-3/4" wide.  Like the planking, the keel is douglas fir.  Here on the east coast I don't have ready access to pieces of douglas fir that size, so I expect to laminate the new section of keel from five layers of the 3/4" x 8" CVG doug fir that is available locally.  The new piece of the keel will be both bolted and epoxied to the old keel.  Fortunately the stem is sound.

One thing I found interesting when I removed the garboard planks was that there was a lot of lead trim ballast between the frames against the plank.  You can see two pieces of that ballast on the blocking under thekeel.  The lead half sphere on the forward side of the blocking weighs 22 pounds and the short lead cylinder on the aft end of the blocking weighs 35 pounds.  Altogether I removed over 400 pounds of lead ballast from within three feet of the bow.  I think I won't be putting that ballast back in because I will be locating a 30 gallon water tank in the bow.  Furthermore, that ballast was likely there to balance the nearly 1,000 lb weight of the old gas engine.  The diesel I will be installing weighs over 500 pounds less than the old engine.  Consequently, I shouldn't need as much trim ballast.

The next step in the keel repair will be to brace the bow of the boat with some additional supports to keep it from sagging when I cut the keel away.

The first step was to install some bracing to support the bow of the boat when I cut the keel away.  I screwed a couple of pieces of wood to the hull spanning several planks and used a some of 2x4s to brace the hull.  After I finished that I got out the tools I would be using to remove the bad wood on the forward end of the keel.  Then I started cutting.

A bit over an hour later the bad wood in the keel was off the boat.  Here you can see the bit of keel I removed.  I didn't wind up using the chain saw because there was too much metal in the old wood.

Here is a picture of the bow showing where I removed the keel.  At this point I hadn't yet finished cutting in the scarf on the old wood of the keel.

Here she is with a temporary brace in place under the stem.  Over the next week or two so I will laminate, shape and install the new bit of the keel.  This picture also shows my other boat, a 1973 Allied Princess 36 ketch.  Yes it is fiberglass.

Nov. 3, 08 - Over the weekend I finished cutting the scarf into the keel and trued it up a bit.  I will laminate the new keel from five pieces of 3/4" douglas fir plank to get the required 3-3/4" thickness.  The first step in that was to make up the first "pattern" piece.  I finished that today and started building the other four pieces.

This picture shows the first piece of the new keel in place.  I should finish making up the other four pieces on Tuesday.  I plan to do the actual keel lamination on Wednesday.  After that I will be doing a lot of shaping and then the cutting of the plank rabbets.

November 10, 08 - This last week I cut out the other four planks for the keel laminate.  Once they were cut, I stacked them up, made sure the alignment was correct, clamped them together and drilled holes for four 2.5"x#12 bronze screws.  Those screws are to maintain the proper alignment during the glue-up.  The lamination was done by wetting out both sides of the three inner pieces and the inside of each of the two outer pieces with unthickened West System epoxy.  I then assembled the laminate stack by coating each faying surface with epoxy thickened with West System 303 microfibers.  Once the five pieces were assembled, I put the four screws in to hold the pieces together and align them properly.  Next I drilled holes for an additional 20 2.5"x#12 bronze screws (giving 12 screws on each side) and put the screws in to clamp the pieces together.  I then put about 450 lbs of lead on top of the laminate and left it for two days for the epoxy to cure.

After the epoxy was cured I planed and sanded the top and bottom of the piece to get smooth surfaces.  Next I wetted out the top surfaces with epoxy and then put on a layer of filler made from a 50:50 mixture of microfibers and microballons to fill any irregularities.  The next day I repeated that process on the bottom of the laminate.

Today (Nov. 10, 08) I did the final fitting of the keel piece (lots of sanding, chiseling and planing) and then put,it in place and drilled long the bolt hole that goes through the keel and the stem knee at the bow.  I will drill the other bolt holes after the keel in place. Tomorrow morning I will epoxy and bolt the new piece to the keel and stem.

Nov. 11, 08 - Today is the day to install the new keel.  The first step was to get all the tools and other items needed for the job together.

The tools included a drill with a 1' long bit for drilling additional holes theough the keel, a 3' long piece of threaded bronze rod to cut the "bolts" from, bronze nuts and washers, six bar clamps, epoxy and microfiber thickening, wrenches for tightening bolts, a spatula for spreading epoxy and a tube of 3M 5200.

The first step was to wet out the surfaces of the scarf with unthickened epoxy.  I purposely left the surface on the new keel piece rough to give the epoxy something to grab for a mechanical bond.  Once both surfaces of the scarf were coated with epoxy I mixed up a big batch of epoxy, which I thickened with West System 303 microfibers to a peanut butter consistency.  I then put a thick layer of thickened epoxy on the scarf surface on the old part of the keel.  After that I coated the top surface of the keel where it contacts the stem knee, stem and gripe with a layer of 3M 5200.

Once everything was coated with epoxy or 5200, I put the keel in place, aligned and clamped it in place with my six bar clamps.  The alignment at the bow was done by inserting a piece of stainless rod into the bolt hole I drilled yesterday.  Once the piece was securely clamped in place I removed the stainless rod used for alignment, measured the length required for the first bolt at the bow and went into the shop to cut off a piece of bronze rod.  I did the cut on my lathe so I could clean up the threads on the end of the rod.  Once I had the roc cut to the correct length, I went back outside, put a nut and washer on one end of the rod, pushed it into place and tightened it down.

After the first bolt was in place I moved to the aft end of the keel.  Working from the inside of the boat I drilled holes for two bolts.  Once those holes were drilled, I cut off two more pieces of rod and used them to bolt the aft end of the keel to the old part of the keel.  Finally, I chucked up the 1' long bit in my drill and drilled the last hole through the forward end of the keel and the stem knee (I drilled the part of the hole in the new wood yesterday).  After trimming the remaining bit of bronze rod to length, I put the last bolt in place.

With all the bolts in place and snuugged down, I cleaned up the excess epoxy and 5200 and the job was done.
 
 

The first picture above shows the keel after it was glued and bolted in place.  The clamps will stay on for a couple of days until the adhesives are cured.  This last picture shows that I still have a bit of work to do before I can call this project finished.  After the adhesives are fully cured, I will get my planes out and shape the keel to match the stem and carve the plank rabbet.  I will also scarfe in new frame ends to replace the rotted wood.  Finally, I will fill the insets where the bolts are with thickened epoxy and coat the entire new piece with epoxy.