J/30 Class Association Forums J/30 Forum The Boat, Sails and Equipment Putting Rhapsody's Keel on a diet

Ok - our weather hasn't cooperated this spring between the snow and cold weather. Today temps hit 50 degrees after being in the 30s last nite. Lead doesn't warm quickly. On Sunday afternoon with the temp a balmy 52 degrees I finally was able to start building up the stations with thickened epoxy. The day I planed the keel it was 60 degrees so I was able to cover the lead with neat epoxy to seal it.

The area is covered with wax paper and the line drawn on the paper so the template can be positioned in the correct spot when the line on the keel are covered with epoxy. The wax paper allows a squeegee and roller to be used to move the thickened epoxy around. This makes it easy to match the contour to the templates.



Below you can see the 1st and 4th template stations faired. You can also see where I epoxied a batten on the front edge of the keel to extend it forward, since the keel was short fore-aft dimension.


Here is a view of the stbd side with the top 4 stations built up. Once the thickened epoxy cures, the wax paper will be peeled off and the contour checked with the templates. Minor sanding and filling if needed will be done to make the fit perfect. The chord positions will be marked and a straight edge used to make sure the chord lines line up flat across the various stations. Once they are verified as straight, thickened epoxy will be spread between the stations using wax paper and a roller / straight edge across the high spots built up. I'll do the keel bottom (station 5) after the rest of the keel is done. I need to raise the boat off the keel and don't want to leave it that way for an extended time.



I'd like to finish this next weekend weather permitting because I'm headed to Antiugua the week after that with some friends to charter a boat. I'd like to be able to have the boat ready to launch by the end of April.