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After haul-out it was clear that my keel needs some work. There are areas that needs some general fairing and overall smoothing. I've read up on using the West System to fill the in the areas that need fairing. Question, after the West System epoxy work (105Epoxy/407) do I benefit from putting a barrier coat over it prior to bottom painting?

It could be I decide that cleaning up the keel is too big a job and have the yard do it (they don't allow any bottom sanding in the yard, hard to figure out how to do it without doing anything that looks like bottom sanding). But thinking about it helps get me through the winter.

Any experience and suggestions to offer?

thanks

I've worked with West System Epoxy -just last evening Wes gluing down some teak planks to dress up our bow. But you need to mix your own fairing compound using one of their filler materials. And getting the consistency right for vertical surfaces isn't that easy. I like to add some cabosil to their 407 powder to make it hold its shape better.

But your boat was built with a polyester or vinylester resin. Many yards around here are using Bondo 277 for fairing. Easy to mix and spread, sets up much faster than epoxy, super easy to sand. I was using also using it the last couple of days to fill in the area between the deck and hull joint at the bow... for some odd reason the deck has a half round bow and the hull is angular. The bondo was really easy and quick to work with. Bondo/3M has other, glazing products to help with the final smoothing. Once you are all done, you can do a barrier coat.

As with all fairing, it is better to add a little at a time than having to sand a lot.

Maybe the yard will let you chem strip, or you can get them to take off the bottom paint and you do the rest.

Best of luck,

Erik

Thank you

We had the entire keel done this year, had lots of chipping, and the aft area had almost entirely separated from the lead keel. For reference, this ran us about $450 for services and parts. I figured it was going to run more, as I recall, it was approx 10 hours, most of it grinding off the old.

Only use epoxy below waterline- if you use polyester product like bondo you'll be doing it over next year!

I just did some of this myself. I used West system epoxy. You can use Cabosil or microballoons to thicken. You really need to thicken a lot to get it to stay on the vertical surface. I still had some sag, and needed to apply three layers with sanding in between. All in all not a tough job. Get the pumps that West System sells. It makes things go much more smoothly. Bring the plastic containers from the grocery store to mix the epoxy (no need to buy the containers at a chandlery). There are cheaper epoxies out there, but I just went for the West system since I was not using tons of it.