I’m at the stage of my build of the Chester Yawl where I’m attaching the skeg.
The Build Manual method involves screws through the hull. I have seen and read of others just epoxy glueing and glassing the sides.
My thought is the holding power of the epoxy and glassed sides would far exceed the additional holding power of the screws. Are the screws just required to hold the skeg in place while the epoxy hardens or is there other benefits?
What have other builders learn from experience over the years of building and rowing?
Hi Ashly, During the build of my Jimmy Skiff 2 (what a great boat!) I followed the lead of others and did not use the screws. I applied epoxy, clamped it down with straps, and moved on from there.
After a year of being dispatched from, and hauled back on a trailer, the skeg remains firmly attached.
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My oldest S&G boat had its skeg put on on in 2002 without screws. I used it at a family reunion last year and it was still rock solid.
The benefits of screws are familiarity and ease and speed of assembly. The downsides are holes in the hull and skeg, stress concentration and different thermal coefficients of expansion that can lead to water intrusion, spalling and tear out.
The benefits of no-screws are the lack of the downsides listed above. The continuous joint distributes stress along the entire length of the skeg while the glass on the sides provides much more tensile strength than just a few screws. The coefficient of thermal expansion is the same as the rest of the wood/epoxy/glass boat so you don’t get differential expansion working the fasteners loose. The downsides are more work and fiddlier work to get the skeg properly positioned and to stay there until the epoxy cures. If the positioning fails and the skeg cures crooked, it’s more work to repair the problem than with screws.
However, by the time the skeg goes on, most boatbuilders will have acquired a fair bit of practice with epoxy and glass and should be able to handle the task.
Have fun,
Laszlo
PS - interesting note about the new forum: the spellchecker complained about skeg, spalling and boatbuilder but was perfectly happy with fiddlier.
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