The Keel

At this point the backbone of the Duck is largely complete.  The "dead wood" is  comprised of two stacked timbers of Angelique- the bottom most was a whole timber and the 2nd piece was laminated from Angelique boards I had milled from the whole timber into which I "sprang" a 3" curve by misjudging the grain when I was trimming it up.  It was a tremendous amount of work to cut the "sprung" timber into boards then laminate back into a straight whole timber but the Yankee in me couldn't see just tossing this hugely expensive timber aside even though I reinvested a week's work and $600 in epoxy for lamination.  I did end up with a straight timber however- which I didn't have before I sawed and laminated.

There are 10 individual keel pieces that comprise what you see here.  The keel components above the dead wood were built up with laminated Doug Fir and then each piece stacked and bedded in Sanitred LRB (more on this in a minute) and then tied together with 3/4" galvanized keel bolts at each station (2' spacing).  Then an  8" wide grounding shoe of mild steel flat bar was lagged onto the bottom of the keel.

Finally the whole assembly was coated with a combination of Sanitred Permaflex and LRB.  Building out doors, I needed to seal and protect the keel from the elements and this is how I chose to do it.  I later found it beneficial to add covering tarps over the whole assembly, especially over the winter.  I will discuss the strategy of Sanitred coatings for this project in upcoming posts.

* Sanitred products are single component polyurethane coatings.  Permaflex is a primer/sealer and LRB (Liquid Rubber Base) creates a water proof, gap filling membrane.  Typically the two products are used together to create a water proof barrier system used for many applications such as waterproofing basements, swimming pools liners and now, marine applications too-   http://www.sanitred.com/