Commander 147

[ebb]

Humps.
Since the Commander was originally laid up in a female mold,
the assumption with a whole lot of certainty is that there would
NOT BE ANY FACTORY BUMPS IN THE HULL.
That is bumps that stick out on the hull.

Any bumps would come from a repair.
If you have access to the inside of the boat opposite any bumps on the outside,
you can probably look down at the roving that Pearson put in and see that it is original, or not.
Pearson's work is often competent but funky - and anybody else's repairs of any age will stand out like a sore thumb.

Sitting here in California I can easily say that I would grind ANY humps flat. Carefully. A bump could be some kind of wierd blister. Should find out what the hell the bumps are. And then fair, repair, and lay on the 6oz.
BUT befor you start grinding a bump:
If you look down into the bilge and you are seeing the signature Pearson layup and you are sure there is a bump on the ouitside - this is not possible.
I would use a batten to REALLY MAKE SURE that any bumps are really bumps and not an area that has hollows around an island that is not actually standing out. Hollows are more likely than bumps in a nonrestored hull.



[The 6oz cloth is not going to add thickness or much strength. Most will agree it is the best way to add a thick supported layer of epoxy barrier. The cloth is light and easy to apply. Another layer or two could be considered if you truly have a thin factory lamination in the area. Put the smaller piece on first, the a larger, then the largest over all. Seems backwards but I think fairing will be easier and there are fewer seams.]


The best test for hull soundness is thumping it. If there is a dull thud you have no other choice but grinding down to green fiberglass. You have to grind all white fibers away.

Build back up thin layers so that removal is easy. If you have to.
A couple bendy wood fairing battens for horizontal and vertical testing are good. You can pick out hollows and bumps real easy with these.

A piece of thin, sharp, stiff gauge metal is good for dragging over just applied fairing compound. Slather the compound on, then drag the steel over the surface, bending the metal to conform to the general curve of the hull.
Imco

[Commander 147]

Because as I taped this 5 foot long metal rule to the hull it looks like the high points should be the fair line of the hull and the low spots make the high points look like humps.

I can tell you with certainty that there is only one spot with a repair to the fiberglass and you can see that spot in the first picture. I am intimate with the inside and outside of the hull in this area after all the time I have spent working on it and the laminate is original and solid. I am the first person to see the inside of the keel since it left the factory full of foam and glassed over.

The starboard side is fine. It has fair lines and looks like it should.

[CapnK]

Regression/shrinkage where there was no filler betwixt hull and ballast, perhaps? Any flexxing thereabouts?

If not, I'd fill it and fair it.

[ebb]

Onefourseven, suh,
that hull there in the closeups looks choice to me. Looks very healthy. That's the original real stuff.

Gouges or low spots could be caused by an overactive former owner. Or as you show a repair nearby, it may well have been some sort of damage that was grinded out but not repaired from that point properly.

If those low spots (5/16" is ENORMOUS) are near your thin hull areas then imco this is still damage not repaired completely. I think it is excellent you grinded the mess off. Now you know what is there. And what is not there. Might help to lay an 8' batten on the good side to get an idea of what might be missing from the damaged side. Try it back and forth to get an image. Except for the gouging there can't be too much difference because it takes a lot of work with a sander/grinder to remove stuff.

Common lam schedule into a female mold is the sprayed on gel coat, then hand layering of mat, then multi layers of roving. You may be able to read these layers in those gouges. The lamination is supposed to be thickest at the keel gradually getting thinner going to the sheer. Thickness is built up with roving. Areas that needed to be smooth enough for painting by Pearson may have had cloth or mat final interior lams.

If those low spots are thin I might lay in some small pieces of fabric and two part into the depressions. Little ones first then bigger ones like you are closing up an old thru-hull. Fill to the approximate surface with cabosil gel and chopped strand. Then lam on the area pieces of 6oz, if that's what you are doing. Then do your fairing with easier to sand stuff like West System's407 powder that you mix with the same laminating plastic.
Never learned how to formulate my own powder for non-sag on vertical surfaces.

Tape on a piece of mylar film with blue tape to keep the filler flat if it wants to sag. Creates 'surface tension'. Peel it off after set.
[Just occurred to me that this is a trick used with epoxy, don't know if it works with vinylester.]

A longer batten will give you a more complete story of the hull's surface ups and downs. Longer pieces of aluminum bar are nice because of their soft edges.
Remember, these hulls were conceived as the fairest any human eye had ever seen. Each side of the hull is identical.
All of the hull's curves run without impediment into every other curve, right to the keelpost.

[mbd]

Could the weight of all the layers of the laminations during the layup of the hull have caused that side of the keel to pull away or form a "bubble" of sorts before it set up?

[Commander227]

IMHO,
I BELIEVE your keel is about as fair as any to come out of Pearson. Nobody at Pearson ever taped a baton to the keel to see how fair it was, I doubt they even checked the plug for the mold.
I BELIEVE the port side will have little likeness to the starboard if you compare the two. The entire cuddy is over 1 1/2" off center on every one of the 1775 Ensigns they built.
I BELIEVE it doesn't make any difference at all. You could fair it out to perfection and not gain an ounce of boat speed. The keel is not like the finely tuned airfoil on a modern fin keeled boat, more of a blob filled with lead.
I BELIEVE you could drop the weakest hull ever to come out of Pearson in the 60's into the drink from 30,000 feet and not suffer any damage. The only force I've ever seen to do any real damage to a 60's era Pearson hull is water inside the boat freezing (and that includes coming off a trailer at highway speeds) so I question the need to reinforce.
I BELIEVE the work you are doing looks very good and the boat already weighs 5500# so a few extra pounds of glass and resin certainly are not going to hurt anything if it helps you sleep at night.
I BELIEVE that like raising a teenager, you need to pick your battles wisely as not to run out of stream (and money)before the job is done.
THIS I BELIEVE
Mike
C227

[Commander227]

I ALSO BELIEVE that I would glass up the exposed end of the lead ballast! (It just don't seem right) Maybe add a drain plug.

[Commander 147]

differing opinions. Without differing opinions we cannot take an honest look at anything and make our own considered decision. So let me say thank-you to you Mike and to Ebb and to anyone else that offers their opinions when I ask a question. Because the more view points that are presented the better the decision I can make.

Mike you make some very valid points. And the fact of the matter is I will most likely run out of boat money before I complete the refit. That is why I am concentrating on labor intensive projects where the material costs are low. This economy has my income way, way down and until it picks up some boat money is going to be scarce.

My personality drives me to make things as perfect as I am capable of doing. If I ignore something that is obviously wrong to me it drives me nuts every time I look at it from then on. So since I was planning to lay the 6oz glass on the lower part of the keel where the gelcoat was sanded through previously anyway I figured I would address the humps in the keel which was the very first thing I noticed when I first inspected the boat. My post was more about asking the correct approach to fair the keel than if I should do it at all. Trust me I'm nuts enough already and don't need a lumpy keel to look at every time the boat is out of the water to drive me further over the edge.

As far as glassing in the end of the ballast I had actually cut the biax to do exactly that first and then changed my mind at the last minute. But I may still follow your advice because I believe the foam around the ballast will do more absorbing of water than draining of it. And there is already a plug in the bottom of the keel installed by the previous owner but as he tells it he never got much water out because the foam holds onto the water so well and does not let it drain.

Mike I am VERY impressed with the work you have done on the Princess as I am with Ebb's workmanship. I will follow your lead on many of the things you have done most importantly the electric inboard drive. But my personality is a little differant from yours so I am pushed to do some things a little differant. I can't help myself it is who I am.

[ebb]

Let's just mess around with this here for a moment.

Water, for a number of reasons, mainly because it is the basement of the vessel, will get into the encapsulated ballast keel space - even when the end of the ballast is closed off.

That's not good for a number of reasons. Not only for boats that get pulled and stay on the hard for awhile but also those that stay in the water year round.

Imco you can't close off the ballast keel unless a drain is provided. As you know some have actually installed a simple bronze drain that can be opened when the boat is out of the water.
There could be a good arguement to put that same drain in the bottom of the bilge where you would close off the ballast.
It's a damned awkward place fpr a mechanical drain thingy.
It's also the bottom of the bilge.

Pearson must have seen water captured in the ballast area as a problem and that's why they inelegantly left it open the way they did. I'd agree with them that it's best to keep water out of the bilge and as much as possible out of the laminate.

Foam in place urethane is the same. Water will get in to it. The boats need a sump as deep as the turn of the fiberglass at the bottom to collect water to be pumped out. Water always gets in - need a relatively easy way to get it out.
A dusty bilge will help keep the boat smelling sweet.


Some have filled the space around the encapsulated ballast with two part plastic. Expensive, but it seems to solve that problem. There are some other reasons besides water being stuck in the cavity that imco filling the space is a good thing. Main reason is that adding plastic in there structurally benefits the keel.
Some of our Ariels and Commanders seem to be pretty thin of hull.

The whole weight of the boat sits on it's laminate when on the hard. And it sits right where the ballast is. The ballast does NOT form fit the space it sits in. The only thing that keeps the ballast from shifting is the tabbing across the top! Imco filling the space around the ballast creates a more solid base where all two and a half tons plus are concentrated when in the jacks. That's my arguement.


Painting a barrier coat on the bottom is not strictly necessary for our A/C's.
But it could lead ultimately to a drier boat. If you do go that route then imco the space around the ballast should be filled.
IMCO
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WAY LATER EDIT: I'm sure it has occured to some owners, but there is an important safety issue on whether the lead ballast needs to be
filled/injected with 2-part plastic...or not. If you accidentally get a leak by grinding a hole or cracking the hull in the area of 'encapsulated' ballast that is open to the sump where your pumps are....you have no way of stopping that water from coming in.

A338 also had a large 'hollow' in the turn of the bottom the keel, I mean under the boat where the ballast is, that had been filled with a bondo like substance. It was fairly easy to dig it out - it was not covered over with fiberglass. It was a Pearson created booboo.
Fixed it with epoxy & biaxial matt.
However a flaw is a flaw is a weak area. When on the hard the whole weight of the boat is balanced on this turn of the bilge. This probably led my thinking to epoxy/lead composite...and subsequently over-building the bilge....

C147 showed the same Pearson anomaly. I'm absolutely sure these were considered cosmetic repairs at the factory. They filled in these caves and delivered them to the dealer painted over. It's pretty obvious that the poor souls laminating the hull with live polyester had some concentration lapses pushing wet roving into deep reaches of the bilge. How many other hulls have these flaws?

If you are not filling in the encapsulation void with liquid plastic, then make damn sure the ballast chamber is completely isolated from the interior of the boat.