Urchin's Keel Bolt travails continue! :( . . . .
I've been trying to waterproof my keel bolt, since I'm tired of wondering if I'm leaking quickly, or sinking slowly, when I go sailing.
In previous posts, I detailed how I'm using a rubber gasket far beefier than previous attempts.
During re-installation, I managed to bang up the threads on my keel bolt, which necessitated ordering a 5/8-11 die to re-thread the bolt and waiting until it showed up.
Up here in north central Florida, sometimes, I feel like I'm working on my boat, on the Installment Plan.
Besides having the fiberglass wear out and leak, I had removed my grounding wire, thinking maybe it was leaking where I had fiberglassed over it.
That gives you a bit of a queasy feeling, when you live in a State that they thought would be good place to locate the National Lightning Institute, on account of all the lightning strikes we get.
So in addition to improving my keel bolt gasketing issues I also needed a better electrical connector.
I had removed the ground wire because when I tried to torque down on the keel bolt, it would crush the copper and I felt that maybe that was contributing to the leaks.
I was never happy with this method of electrical connection: anyway.
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What I neeeded was an electrical terminal on steroids.
One problem: Ain't none.
At least, not any that will fit over a 5/8"-11 316 stainless steel bolt.
So I went for my fallback position and ordered a 6" X 6" .073" thick, 316 stainlesss steel plate from McMaster Carr and decided to fabricate my own.
(Back in south Florida, there were any number of sources I could have simply driven over to and obtained the requisite materials.)
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I decided to use a fender washer as a form, since it could do double duty as a compression washer for the rubber gasketing and as an electrical terminal.
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Did the rough cuts with a Milwaukee Sawzall, the tool that can cut anything except a straight line.
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Once the rough form was cut out, I clamped a fender washer over it and used it as a template to grind the edges smooth (er).
After some more thought, I cut in a second set of crimps so that I could crimp onto the insulated portion of the wire for mechanical strain relief and the inner crimp to secure the bare wire.
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Next, I beat the crimp edges over a small bolt of the same diameter as my ground wire.
I was originally going to use my son-in-law's heavy duty electrical terminal crimping tool, but after some thought, realized it would likely spring the jaws on a rather expensive tool.
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Here you can see the insulated part of a wire under the strain relief crimp and the wire under the main crimp.
(Using the old wire for an example, since the actual grounding wire was still in the boat.)
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This should minimize any galvanic corrosion between the copper and the stainless steel.
Also hedging my bets, I have a 100 Amp knife switch that I only engage when I suspect lightning activity in the area.
The wire goes from the mast step-plate bolt and is routed along one side of the main bulkhead and down to the keel.
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Here it is attached to the cabin ground wire.
In case you were wondering why the wire looks a little the worse for wear, it's because that wire is a survivor of a lightning strike that welded my mast step bolt to the step plate.
I had to saw off the welded part of the bolt (with a hacksaw) in order to unstep the mast to go home.
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Here is the Tef-Gel, applied to the terminal.
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In the next post, will be more pics and the final installation.
Charles Brennan