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| Starboard side keel before I started |
Well is been just over two months since I last updated. This is due to things not going as fast as I like them to and lack of time by my part. I must admit I was hoping to be further on with the project than I am right but alas I will update you now. So what have I been up to...
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| Starboard side keel halfway through using drill with wire brush attachment |
Since my last update I have cleaned inside and out and it is looking nice and sparkling so far. I did have some photos of it looking nice but modern technology struck back and I lost them all when I updated my phone. A whole lot of my time has been spent trying to take these Keels back to bare metal and re paint. This has been a trail and error task on my part as I didn't really know what I was doing.
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| Starboard side keel "nicely polished!" |
So first of all I attempted to take the keels back with a drill with a wire brush attachment. I spent one day attacking one side of the keel with this method. This had the great effect of polishing the rust and not actually getting rid of any of it. This was rather disheartening as you can imagine. I took some advice from someone down at the club and they recommended using and angle grinder.
I must admit that I thought this would be far too heavy for what I wanted to do so I was a bit nervous in trying this. Anyway, I thought I might as well give it a go so I took and angle grinder down and started. After about 10 min I was having some success but it still didn't seem to be bringing enough rust off. I sat and stared at the rusty keel for a few moments thinking if there was anything I could do. I had read on the net that sandblasting works but I was lacking funds and tools for a sandblaster.
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| Starboard side keel, painted with rust cure after chisling, angle grinder |
Luckily while I was sat pondering someone suggested I hit it with a hammer! I laughed in disbelieve at first until he grabbed a hammer and started hitting my keel. The result was years worth of rust and paint was chipping off in big lumps revealing the bare metal I was hoping to get down to!. Genius I thought. so I set to destroying my keel with a hammer. after about 30minutes, my arm was getting tired and it didn't seem like I was making a huge amount of progress. Yes some chunks of rust was coming off but it was taking ages and it still looked tatty.
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| Port side keel, painted with rust cure after chisling, angle grinder |
Back to the drawing board I went and then I remembered that I had an air compressor and some air chisels!. So I lugged all this gear down to the boat and set to work chiselling the rust off with the compress. It worked like a charm. it was like a hot knife going through butter. so after chiselling one side of the keel it still showed some service rust, so a go with the angle grinder got rid of the service rust and then a stint with the drill and wire brush polished it up nicely! as time was a ticking I didn’t want my hard work to go to waist I painted the polished side with some rust cure to protect it as I worked on the other sides.
15 hours later I has 2 nicely polished keels ready for primer. Two coats of primer later and my keels are complete and ready for painting.
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| Port side keel, coated in primer |
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| Starboard side keel, coated in primer |
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| Port side keel (underneigh), coated in primer |
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| Starboard side keel (underneigh), coated in primer |
