Keel Surgery

So while Mike was valiantly forging ahead and making progress, I was having a bit of a setback. My keel was twisted. There was an S curve to the stern stem that started from in front of the stern butt seam. It looked like this:

It's a little hard to see in the picture, but it was not good. Previously, in a moment of frustration combined with really wanting to move on to the next phase, I had deemed the slight twist to be "probably not that big of a deal." At the time (after finishing wiring), the thought of rewiring seemed like a daunting task. So I went ahead with the epoxying of the seams, thinking that I could somehow "fix" the twist with the thick wood flour bead used to round the stems. Of course, that didn't work at all.

As I continued on, I kept thinking about the twisted keel and how annoying it would be if it made the boat track improperly, and WHY didn't I just fix it when I had the chance? Once the hull was ready for fiberglassing (after which there'd be no turning back), I took another look at it. It looked bad. It bothered me. Fixing it would be annoying. Paddling for months in a boat that didn't move properly would be REALLY annoying. It had to be fixed. I stewed about the whole thing for a couple days, then sucked it up and got ready for kayak surgery.



Step one involved filing/scraping off the thick wood flour/epoxy bead that covered the stem. Not so bad. Then the triangular stern brace had to be removed, so that I could cut open the keel and move the panels around. Here, the tip of the hot glue gun is being used to soften up the glue holding the brace in:


Once the brace was out, it was time to open up the keel. SCARY!! Some folks online recommended using a saw to cut the panels apart, but the thinnest saw I had was still too thick, so I used a razor knife to separate them. I kept having visions of the boat suddenly splitting apart and exploding into tiny pieces, but this did not happen. There was a moment when I got to the curve in the stem when a good chunk of the keel cracked open that made my heart stop, but the boat had split where I wanted it too, so all was well. Once I got past the curve, I turned the boat over onto level benches and strapped it down with strapping tape (which I had also wrapped around the hull in several places, just to feel good about keeping everything together).

The tip of the hot melt gun worked wonderfully to heat up the epoxy so that the knife could slice through it like butter. It also worked really well to "dig out" the epoxy from the groove in the keel. I worked my way along the keel inch by inch, till I got to about 6 inches in front of the stern seam.



Once the keel was split open, it became clear that I needed to separate the first panels, too, so I repeated pretty much the same process to release both the #1 panels. The whole process took somewhere around 6 hours. Once the panels were sanded smooth, it was time to rewire them:


Hooray! The loosely wired panels were clamped back together, then the clamps were wiggled around all over the place until everything looked straightened up (which was hard to see with all the wires in the way...), then the stern brace was put back in, the wires tightened up, and the seams re-epoxied.
Three days after surgery began, I had a straight keel. At least it's 99% straight. It's a hell of a lot straighter than it was, anyway, and here it is all shiny with a saturation coat!

I feel like a proud mother of the Little Keel that Could. It looks much, much better and I'm quite happy with how it turned out. The wood on the stern is a little marred in some places, but otherwise you can't really tell it had been fixed. I had been really dreading (and whining about) this whole process, especially after all that scraping and sanding, all I wanted to do was get the hull glassed. But I'm SO glad I took the time to fix this, and it turned into a great learning experience and confidence boost.