Mini keels

[troppoboat]

I am fitting the mini keel one of my hulls next week and was wondering what type of fiber would be best for this area as we will be beaching our boat from time to time Regards Shane

[Sonosailor]

No clue about the fibre. However, my Tobago 35 has the keels as independent units that are premanufactured and stuck into slots in the main hull. If I were starting from scratch, I would use epoxies around foam, as the epoxies don't attack the foam like the polyesters. This would free you up to shape in foam, and then cover and attach as a separate step.

To be fair, I may be out of my league. You should broach the subject at themultihull.com where they really go into such building detail.

Cheers, Sonosailor

[delmarrey]

Have you considered kevlar cloth? It's commonly used in this area for bow and keel wood to protect against abrasion. You could use a couple layers around the forward and bottom edges for punchure protection.
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[troppoboat]

G'Day Sonosailer and Delmarry thanks for the link the designer, who I finaly was able to contact has recomended dynel cloth. In my mind Delmarrys suggestion of carbon/kevlar sounds like a good one in preference to dynel. I have never used carbon and have been told its hard to consolidate with out vacume bagging is there a way to do this without going to all the fuss. regards Shane

[Alan Wheeler]

Carbon fibre is unbelievably expensive and twice that to work with. Kevlar is easier and cheaper, but still more expensive than Dynal.
The cloth itself is not what you need to give you the abrasion resistance. Look at it this way, if you have worn down to the cloth, you have worn to far anyway. You need an anti-wear coating applied to area's of contact, to protect the surface below. i.e the paint/gelcoat, resin/fibre. If the designer is happy that Dynal be used, then I would keep to what he suggests. That's the guy that should know best. Then make sure you place some protective barrier such as Epoxy carborundum on any contact area.
Wheels

[Wahoo Sails]

you might want to have a look at www.keelshield.net
Bob

[JeffG]

You coud do what a lot of canoeist do. Lay on the layer of heavy glass cloth but for the last 2 coats of epoxy, mix carbon powder in to the epoxy. It makes the epoxy very hard. If you wear through that, all you have to do is apply more epoxy.