Keel Sleeve

I created the keelbox structure out of wood and carbon fiber quite a while ago (described below).  However, I always intended to put a foil shaped liner inside of the rectangular keelbox.  The liner extends the full height of the keel-box structure will be attached to the hull at the bottom and will be water-tight.


Take 1

I had some luck in the past with hand molding Carbon Fiber cloth around items and then just wrapping it with release cloth.  So in my first attempt, I wrapped several layers of plastic around the keel foil and then applied a four layers of 11 oz CF cloth over the plastic.  I then covered that with release cloth and clamped the bottom of the cloth with spring clamps.  Unfortunately, the sleeve that resulted was really lumpy both on the inside and the outside.  Even though no one is ever going to see this thing once it's installed, I just couldn't use something so ugly on the boat.  


Take 2
So I started over on the sleeve with a few changes.  1) I used alternating layers of glass cloth and CF instead of straight CF, 2) I mixed epoxy with graphite powder for the inside layers, and 3) I vacuum bagged the whole thing.


The graphite powder is supposed to make the inside of the sleeve much more slippery and to make retracting the keel much easier over the life of the boat.  I've also learned a thing or two about vacuum bagging while doing this boat project.  Using release cloth between the "bag" and the item yields a much nicer surface.  The second picture here, shows the sleeve while the vacuum was being applied.  I put the absorber cloth underneath the whole sleeve and wrapped the entire thing with the peel-ply.


The final picture shows the result.  The sleeve came out beautifully.  The next step is to open up the trailing edge the sleeve and then re-seal it with CF tape.  This is to give a bit more room inside the sleeve so that the foil doesn't bind.