keel voids

[ebb]

Theis,
If yer talking about a delicate watch or a coffee pot, expansion is an issue.

If the lead ballast in 338 was dropped in at shop temperature (80 degrees) 40 years ago and is now suspended in liquid (40 to 70 degrees) - if anything it has shrunk a 1/16 of in inch in length, 1/128 of an inch in width.

Being a massive chunk of metal I can't imagine (I can't imagine a lot of things) a ton of lead changing its dimensions very much. The change in temperature to get the lead to change dimension would have to be significant - let's say 100 degrees from datum.

When would that happen?

I think that encapsulating the lead (non-scientifically) is perfectly safe. (Of course I do, since I did it!)

If the boat is going to stand on its keel anytime in the future it would be a great deal better for the weight of the boat to sit on a SOLID foundation. That's just my opinion.
There is certainly more arguement for immovable ballast if the boat will ever spend time on one tack or in bad wave action as a cruiser. From the standpoint of running aground and damaging the encapsulated ballast keel area it may eliminate leak potential if the hull gets gouged. Doesn't guarantee it, just increases margin. This is an area that cannot be repaired from the inside.

I also have the feeling that if there is any environmental expanding and contracting the whole boat is going to be doing it. Lead is a non-corrosive, pretty inert, element unless you've turned it into a battery by carrying acid around in your bilge. Then you'd have a bloating problem


Something to seriously think about:
I've gotten some Sanitred product to test on the boat. One of the products is a LIQUID polyurethane that will cure at ANY THICKNESS. (Will set up in the container like epoxy.) Maybe this rubber which cures tuff but pliable would be just the filler for the spaces between the lead and the hull in your boat. To preserve an A/C, I think it is important to keep water out of the laminate* - along with the reasons mentioned above if the boat goes offshore. There can't be any arguement for doing nothing about it....when you are renovating and have the boat out.

*I also argue in favor of SEALING (barrier coating) below the waterline with epoxy or vinylester outside and inside.
There are NO ONGOING TESTS ON 40 YEAR OLD LAMINATES that I am aware of. It is prudent to keep water (especially salt water) out of polyester laminates until such tests are published. We are dealing with first-ever materials in first-ever applications that never have been adequately explored in terms of longevity, soaked or dry, stressed or not stressed.

[Theis]

Your idea of a pliable neoprene type filler is the ultimate solution, in my opinion. That solves the problems both with ice and resinas a filer.

I do understand that the lead contracts after it is poured. But I don't think the pig is poured into the cavity. Is it? I suspect the lead is solid when it is inserted into the cavity.

In terms of expansion, my concern is not principally with a half inch gap in the hull do to expansion, but a hairline crack around the cavity where the lead isl - most likely not even visible, but pourous to water - and weakening the cavity - and the hull.

Your comment about electrolysis with salt water is particularly interesting If the lead was surrounded with salt water (and to a much lesser extent with fresh water), you possibly have a lead acid battery, the bolts or water in the bilge being one contact surface and the water around the lead being the ground. What does that do? I don't know. Or do the bolts in the keel make a particularly good grounding plate when the lead is surrounded by lake/ocean water?

[ebb]

Aye! The lead was not more than 80 degrees when put to bed!

A thick matt and polyester comforter has kept it cozy across the top for decades - Everet and Carl knew that it would not only keep it from moving but also thicken the hull and soften and widen the stress zone where the baulk of lead stops and empty bilge begins.

[338 has further immobilized the ballast with floors (miniature bulkheads) and epoxywork under the cabin sole that in theory, anyway, may help to transfer stress up into the turn of the bilge (a strong shape in itself) in a kind of box beam. I visualized that same imaginary dotted line on the hull you have - and asked, what if the bottom got whacked just so - it could snap it off like a scored brick. The top of the lead could shear itself and the bottom off. There is in 338 only 3/8s of an inch thickness to the hull there. Holding half the weight of the whole boat. Rough sea, rough grounding. Augh ohhhh!]

Interesting, neoprene has been around forever, but I've never seen it in a liquid form?

[Mike Goodwin]

Your comment about electrolysis with salt water is particularly interesting If the lead was surrounded with salt water (and to a much lesser extent with fresh water), you possibly have a lead acid battery, the bolts or water in the bilge being one contact surface and the water around the lead being the ground. What does that do? I don't know. Or do the bolts in the keel make a particularly good grounding plate when the lead is surrounded by lake/ocean water?

You need sulfuric acid to make a lead /acid battery . Water dilutes acid and suspended minerals further to weaken the effect .

[Theis]

Mike: I don't know if you need sulfuric acid specifically, or any acid (I think it is the latter). My thought is that when water that is in contact with the resin turns acidic, and sulphuric acid is not a unique requirement, you would create a battery - perhaps not the best, but still a battery. At a minimum the lead would have a conductor with a lot of water surface area to act as a ground for the the spars and lifelines.

Ebb: Your comment about the keel cracking off, in its entirety, is one that has concerned me (particularly considering the abuse and pounding #82 has had) and at least used to concern the insurance industry, as I understand their concern for insuring older boats. The issue is whether aging fiberglass/resin crystalizes and becomes brittle. In other words, if something "taps" it, does it shatter like the side windows of a car. My understanding is that the concern has been disspelled by the "experts". At least I have never heard of a hull snapping like that, although I have heard of bolted-on keels falling off, and the weights on fin keels falling off.. Any insight or comments?

[ebb]

no insight, damn!
Some time ago found on net something about tests done by the Navy on some old glass barges they had presumably still floating around somewhere.
They were still in good shape - probably had laminates 6" thick.

But have you heard of any controlled long term experiments on polyester/glass structures?
Me neither. I would think, tho, that the A/Cs are made of 'pre-engineered' materials ie are thicker and simpler and less adulterated.

Would be great if tests were made on hull laminate from the '50s and early '60s from a sailboat headed for the chainsaw. Tests designed to show bending and twisting strengths, continual immersion, salt and marine life intrusion, "crystalization". separation or delaminating resistence, shock loads, point loads, etc.

OR PUT THE WHOLE BOAT THRU OUTRAGEOUS TESTING. Drive it at 8 knots into pilings or a concrete wall. CRASH TESTS. (I'd personally like to find out how a deck to hull butt joint lasts for 40 years, Not the Triton.) No, you're correct, we want to find out about the aging plastic and fiberglass!

Good Ole Boat might fund the study. Maybe there are some funds available. Maybe Pearson could be persuaded to fund third party engineered tests of an early Triton or Ariel? We are rapidly approaching the half century anniversary of production glass boats.

I dun know, can't just ASSUME a plastic classic is going to go on forever, right? You know plastic is an organic compound, it's going to compost sometime.


You got something there, Mike! Let's make an AGM!
Have to cut off the polyester lid from the lead (can't be stuck on there too good), lay on the stuffing from an old sleeping bag, drill in some terminal posts, pour on a couple gallons white vinegar, and seal it back up, Gottcher self a POWER cell, ma friend! Last a hunnert years!

[Robert Lemasters]

As a young lad I worked for Wall Rope in Beverly N.J. as an extrusion technician back... before I was drafted, what deferments? The company made synthetic and natural ropes of all sizes and twists. I remember an engineer from Dupont who we bought resin from, comment that some of thier synthetic resins would last hundreds of years then each man made carbon atom (velance band with more electrons then natural) would fail/ come apart (atomic memory) at about the same time from thier manufacture. These synthetic materials have a life span and the clock begins to tick the moment that they were created.

[ebb]

To paraphrase a well known media doc who said last night on the TV, there is no way to stop the aging process, our only option is to go with grace. A number of disappointed old folks in the audience didn't want to hear that.

We all remember fiberglass corrugated panels we put over a porch or greenhouse - after a while we notice the sun side has gotten rough and spotty and hairy with glass because the UV ate the plastic, along with whatever else eats plastic in the environment.

Imco you have to keep the gel coat happy on an A/C, it protects the laminate underneath, and the protection is probably the cosmetic pigments alone.
A new paint job would help protect the substrate better than anything.

One partially exposed edge is the hull to deck joint. Under the half round the joint is imco vulnerable to degrading / aging.

Keeping salt water out of the laminate is also important, as we have seen some hulls sustain chemical reactions, some very serious because of incompletely catalyzed plastic in the laminate. Seems unlikely after four decades that there are any reactionary chemicals in the wet layers of an A/C hull - BUT, we don't know. Barrier coating a dry boat outside and keeping a dry bilge will help keep the knackers at bay. Wouldn't you think?

What if the chemical bond of the polyester just decides to go soft one day or turn into dust....?

But when grinding on old green tabbing and laminate inside, the odor of styrene smells just as pungent as if it had set up yesterday!

Amber, which is fossilized resin, doesn't age perse. Actually, it does, I believe, continue to slowly crosslink or polymerize. (it's ALIVE, ALIVE!!) I wonder how its structure differs from polyester resin?

[Robert Lemasters]

ebb, I have used Larch resin in aritst's oil paint formulations for restorations and to imitate the quality of old master oil paints, it seems that this natural resin plus others such as Canada balsam are very nealy the same as acrylic resin (spectographicaly). When I replaced the stainless steel rub rail I filled the many gaps in the seam where the hull meets the deck with West System mixed with filler for strength. My father who worked for Rohm & Haas thought that some of thier resins would last as long as amber with the same rate of discoloration or yellowing. When I repaired the hull on my boat the inside of fiberglass seemed like new, I bet these boats will last beyond our imagination and be used by who or whatever is around then, maybe fishermen living in mud huts along some shoreline that dos'nt exist yet, Ocean front in Kansas City.

[ebb]

That line from Tennyson, a voyager in the ocean of song.
A biologist writes:
"... Though it grows well on a limestone subsoil, it is on sloping mountain sides, where the oldest rocks of the earth's crust crumble into crystalline fragments over some brawling beck that tumble through the glen, that the Larch is seen in its greatest beauty. ...."

How often does a biologist resin poetic about a conifer? His/her alliterative prose gets the heat going on a wonderful high forest lone tree. Marvelous you can use its pungent resin for art restoration. Can dream that two part plastic aspires to similar restoration. Not only of a rare Ariel but the poor schlep's itchy soul.


Robert,
Some time, perhaps, perhaps in the distant future,
a space travelor will come upon a fully rigged Ariel on a cosmic rhumb to a far galaxy...

[Commander 147]

The foam in the keel of my commander (in the area behind the lead ballast) appears to be water logged. It continues to drain and leach through the keel for what has now been probably over a year since it was last in the water. I need to get this keel dry so I can stop blisters from forming. Has anyone here ever cut in from the top and removed the foam and then replaced it with something else less likely to hold water And preferably less expensive and lighter than solid epoxy?

The previous owner has been fighting the problem for the last 12 years. I want to fix it once and for all. I believe the water is seeping in from the sump area where the glass covering the keel void is cracked. See picture below.

The manual discusses pumping in epoxy through holes drilled in the keel (which I have drilled to try and drain the water) but what happens to the foam when you pump in epoxy? does it melt into goo or does it retain it's current state and if so how do you ever get all the water out of it?

Advise would be appreciated.

[mbd]

Check out Tim M's thread on A-24 beginning at post #15. He had some foam in his bilge as well...

http://www.pearsonariel.org/discussi...ead.php?t=1558

[bill@ariel231]

it took me several seasons to fix this issue for good. tim (A-24) highlights many of the big issues (fractures in the rudder fittings are a big source, as is crazed fiberglass and fractures from previous groundings).

my other water entry point was the factory glasswork in the bilge. The cracked glasswork in your photo reflects the same condition A-231 had when we started. two layers of 6oz glass in the bilge fixed my leaks. One other problem area i found is under the cabin sole in the vee berth. the glass work on A-231 was essenitially unfinished at the forward most part of the bildge (under the vee berth). therefore whenever i washed down the bilge, some of the fresh water from the hose got into the keel void. Fixing A-231 in this area required a skill-saw to get access for the repair. the good news is the problem can be detected with a dental mirror, so surgery is only necessary for the repair not for diagnosis.


for A-231, drying my foam for good was a multi season effort. my bilge now sports a fresh water deck fitting to allow me to check the keel void seasonally while dockside and pump out any offending water if it showed up. knock on wood, it's been dry down there since 2003.


each of the fixes outlined on A-24's page (and here) are each easy, determining where the water is coming from take some time.

cheers,
bill@ariel231

[Commander227]

....IMHO.... So a little water gets in your keel cavity, big deal, its not hurting anything. (unless its seeping in from the keel and seeping out into your bilge and sinking your boat) Live and let live I say. I have chased this problem on many Ensigns, Sea Sprites and the like and become callused to it. Fix the obvious problems and drill a hole in the bottom to let the water out in the off season, fill it with MarineTex before launch and color it good.

[ebb]

Why not take the bloody foam out?

It's never going to dry because it is probably urethane, so it's a sponge.
If interior water is compromising your hull, and you want to barrier coat, etc. you got to remove it.
To drain foam filler by drilling thru the hull from the outside is really not smart.

I'm not familiar with the Commander. If the keel is like the Ariel it has encapsulated lead in it without foam added by the factory. Because the area is supposedly inaccessable drilling holes here in the hull is done to drain the space the ballast lead does not fully take up. A few people have incorporated a spigot in this area to drain the boat when on hard. I don't like this idea either. This is another kettle of clams.

What you have is something imco not connected to the ballast keel. Altho it may be by chance.
As you know the encapsulating process inside was sometimes not done well.
Classic case is that encapsulation did not continue down the back of the lead.
This where your foam filler is?
Isn't it just an cosmetic addition to bring the bilge up to a convenient level?
Take it out!

You'll have a deeper narrower bilge.
You'll be able to keep your eye on any water gathering there.
It's the deepest part of the boat.
All water will drain there.
And if you loose you socks down there, you reach in and pluck them up, it's not that much deeper.


The Ariel/Commander hulls are not known for blistering.
It certainly is not likely NOW after 45 years in the water.
You won't get classic modern blistering because the boat wasn't made with cheap polyester.
Only thing that might blister is the bottom paint.
It is a good idea to barrier coat the hull, water does get thru polyester.
I personally did not notice that the hull from the waterline down was in any way waterlogged when A338 was deconstructed.
It may have watervapor in it.

IMCO as always.