Keel repairs -essential ?

[cgf10]

I have some minor ships and nicks in my keel, in one place you can just about see the underneath material. Can it keep until October or should I attend to this now ?

[BogMonster]

If you can see through the gelcoat I'd fix it immediately especially if you leave it in the water at all.

Plastic Padding Gelcoat repair is what I used on mine when I gouged the keel on an obstruction - easy to use and doesn't take long. Getting a perfect finish is less easy (still haven't got around to it!) but making it waterproof is the important bit IMHO.

[alystra]

Originally Posted by BogMonster

If you can see through the gelcoat I'd fix it immediately especially if you leave it in the water at all.

Plastic Padding Gelcoat repair is what I used on mine when I gouged the keel on an obstruction - easy to use and doesn't take long. Getting a perfect finish is less easy (still haven't got around to it!) but making it waterproof is the important bit IMHO.

Agreed. I think the perfect finish involves a lot of elbow grease. However, a trick I learned for dealing with the small chips and long scratch caused by one of the rollers on my trailer coming off at the wrong moment was, after applying the filler (with an old credit card), cover the repair with a strip of sellotape. you can then smooth it out easily. Worked better than expected for me.

[MustRib]

that sounds interesting...
can you give us a little more detail on how you did that?
does it not pull out the repair...etc..?

[Channel Ribs]

Originally Posted by alystra

Agreed. I think the perfect finish involves a lot of elbow grease. However, a trick I learned for dealing with the small chips and long scratch caused by one of the rollers on my trailer coming off at the wrong moment was, after applying the filler (with an old credit card), cover the repair with a strip of sellotape. you can then smooth it out easily. Worked better than expected for me.

We use masking tape, comes away more cleanly. It does save a lot of time.

[Dry Run]

Funnily enough, I used a credit card to fix my hull - paid someone else to do it! BOOM BOOM!

[kerny]

Originally Posted by Dry Run

Funnily enough, I used a credit card to fix my hull - paid someone else to do it! BOOM BOOM!

[alystra]

Originally Posted by MustRib

that sounds interesting...
can you give us a little more detail on how you did that?
does it not pull out the repair...etc..?

No, leave it on until the repair is hard. I should have said use the original easy tear sellotape. It's not waterproof and any bits still stuck can be washed off. Masking tape, as suggested above, may be better, but transparent tape allows you to see any bubbles or voids etc. and you can sometimes push excess filler into them. I might add that I'm no expert, though I have built several GRP boats in the distant past.