The Keel
Tartan 30’s are externally ballasted with a solid lead keel that is bolted to the molded bilge sump/canoe body. It’s normal for a crack to generate at this joint where the keel flexes slightly or expands differently. This is known as “keel smile.“ It’s typically just a cosmetic issue, but one that annoys owners enough to go to great lengths to fix.
One way to solve this is to laminate the crack, but in the interest of time and experimentation I opted to create a groove at the joint and fill it with West Systems G-Flex on one side, and 5200 on the other. The 5200 will certainly take the flex and movement, but it doesn’t take paint and is difficult to get a fair transition. The G-Flex may be too rigid to prevent cracking. We will see….
A closeup of post scrape filling. I laid the filler over a piece of fineline tape, then pulled it wet to form this grrove.
Filling over the recently "potted" through hulls.
After some sanding & spot filling.
The groove filled with g flex on the port side. It was easier to scrape the g flex than sand it.
Groove filled with 5200 on the starboard side.
