Ariel #24

[mbd]

Nice work Tim. You don't waste any time! Must be nice to have have your new baby home, safe and sound. Congrats again!

"It is correct to assume that the entire keel void... can be reached from the top where I have access?" Only if you've got monkey arms.

Your bilge is looking a lot like mine. My lead pig will be removed from the bilge this season as well...

[Tim Mertinooke]

Well, the bilge is empty with the exception of some foam up high where water never reaches it at the back of the keel. This foam is dry and sticks to the fiberglass walls of the bilge very well so I'll wrestle with it later. Here are some pictures:


I got this area dry with the shop vac and I noticed water seeping in around the laminate at the back side of the lead at the right of the picture. I hope to have the void around the lead ballast drained once I begin grinding the keel this weekend.



This is looking through the access panel toward the back of the bilge where the rudder shoe is located. Tim L. told me that the flaking yellow resin that I thought was delamination is just extra resin gooped on in large amounts during construction to ensure complete saturation of the fibers and that it is structural insignificant.



This is looking back at my new foamless, pigless bilge.



After the area dries out and I remove the flaking yellow resin, My idea is to fill the bottom of the bilge will epoxy to bring it up level with the lead ballast so that I stop the transfer of water from the void around the ballast to the void in the back of the keel. My hope is that it will stop any water that tries to enter the bilge via the rudder shoe as well. The bilge will be deep as I do not intend on putting the lead pigs back in, but it will be completely exposed and I will have no mysteries or suprises...I hate surprises. By the way, my website is up and running, www.ariel24.com but I'm still getting it off the ground in terms of uploading pictures, descriptions, etc. Be patient. It will echo most of what is posted here really, I just wanted a place others can go to see the project. Tim

[Tim Mertinooke]

Well, I attacked the keel bulge today to find its cause and was quite surprised to find this:





































The last two photos shows what it looked like after chiseling out the lead for about 15 minutes. My plan is to have it flush by the end of this week. I would like to start laying up the glass sometime next week as well weather permitting.

[commanderpete]

That is odd.

I thought the foam poured in there did the damage. But, that lead trunnion would also leave a hard spot.

I might try to cut the lead back, maybe with an angle ginder and cut off wheel.

I would probably try to shove a bunch of glass under the bottom of the lead piece.

Ebay is a good place to find industrial scraps of heavy mat and cloth by the pound. Biax cloth with mat attached is the most useful. But, beware the ebay shipping crooks

[bill@ariel231]

that's an interesting failure, was the that lead lump pushed out by some corroding rebar at the center of the ballast? The tear in the lead doesn't look like it was cast in place...

(just in case ebay doesn't work out, you may also want to look at www.jamestowndistributors.com or www.defender.com and similar sites for glass & mat. you won't need much material to get that spot back in shape).