Help! - Need to lift a 2 ton hull

[amidships]

Hi,

I currently own a 1970's wooden Folkboat and I have a problem. I want to lift the boat above it's storage cradle to a height of about 6 inches so that I can get to the top of the ballast keel to prepare/seal it. I also want to be able to do the same to the bottom of the keelson. I am toying with building a heavy duty wooden frame within (but separate from) the cradle she's resting on (on here keel), undoing the keelbolt nuts and then jacking the frame up, inch by inch, in stages - chocking it as I go.

Anyone done this before? Anyone got any tips/hints?

Thanks
Amidships

[Dan McCosh]

If you built an overhead frame, you cold lift it with slings and lever-winches. Each winch would only be lifting 1,000 lbs. A heavy lifting strap isn't all that expensive.

[Norske3]

I'm sure the people in Lunenburg can tell you all you need to know. smile.gif

[Thad]

I'd jack under the ballast near to the center of weight, blocking her up as you go, pushing the gunwales to square her up will not be hard.

[amidships]

Guys, thanks for replies so far.

Norske3: Whom did you have in mind?

Dan: What sort of frame - steel, wood? Any ideas on size/gauge?

Thad: I can't jack under the ballast keel as I want that to remain on the cradle while I lift the boat about 6 inches.

Thanks
Amidships

[mmd]

Amidships; Where are ya at? Where's the boat? I gotta be in Lunenburg later today and can pop by if convenient for both of us.

[amidships]

Hi mmd,

I'm in Upper Cornwall - the boat is too. I've seen your postings on here - what's your speciality?

Regards
Amidships

[StevenBauer]

Jack the ballast up with the boat, then hold the boat in place with some jack stands and lower the ballast to do your work. No worries. smile.gif

Steven

[mmd]

Amidships - I do custom design of commercial and pleasure boats to around 20 metres LOA. Before that, I spent a bunch of time designing bits and pieces of warships, ferries, containerships, and offshore supply vessels. Ran a boatyard for a while, and sailed commercially in my younger years. Professional boat junkie, I guess.

[OEX]

Steve is on it. No worries, I used 8 pop-it stands and just worked them little by little up to drop my ballast keel, and one jack under the ballast until all up and stable---then took it out, took off the ballast (very long tough job) and then put the jack back. This was on a 34 gaff cutter of heavy displacement. Do not go over board on a lift, etc---you have all you need right there probably. Folkboat is not very heavy either.

Cheers---there are pix of my boat in the air at Katarina (http://www.woodenboatrescue.org/Katarina%20Colin%20Archer--%20Atkin.htm)

cheers

[amidships]

Originally posted by mmd:
Amidships - I do custom design of commercial and pleasure boats to around 20 metres LOA. Before that, I spent a bunch of time designing bits and pieces of warships, ferries, containerships, and offshore supply vessels. Ran a boatyard for a while, and sailed commercially in my younger years. Professional boat junkie, I guess.Sounds great!! I've 'messaged' you - thanks

[amidships]

Guys,

thanks for all the replies, got some good ideas and hopefully, mmd will be taking a look shortly.

I think that while I am at it, I'll pull the keel bolts.......I need to re-laminate the floors so might as well. Anyone removed the keel bolts on and Abbott 'built' (Sarnia, Ontario) Folkbolt? The ballast keel is cast iron and the bolts look like galvanised (eek).

I read somewhere that the bolt might not go all the way through and that there may be 'pockets' let into the sides of the ballast keel to allow access to the nuts (I believe that the bolts are actually long studs with a nut at each end??)

Any help, guidance, advice gratefully received.

Here is a photo of the boat by the way.

http://www.acountrylife.com/misc/paradigm1.jpg

(I also have some 'ugly photos of 'ice split' garboards and a 'checked' keelson......)

Kind Regards
Amidships

[ 09-21-2005, 07:15 AM: Message edited by: amidships ]

[Noah]

Hi Amidships,

I pulled the keelbolts on my Folkboat with an unusual technique that worked very well:

Mine were in pockets on the side of the keel. These pockets had been filled with cement that took forever to get out. Not fun. I found that I could just get a sawzall metal blade into the pocket, so I cut off the nuts in the pockets.

Next I got a big thick piece of angle iron, and cut it so that it could rest on one floor, go over the next, and the end was in the middle of the bay between the floors. I notched the angle iron so that it could slip over the bolt, but still catch the nut on the keel bolt.

I cut away some of the top of the floor timber so that part of the keel bolt was exposed, and slipped the angle iron onto the bolt. As I said before, the back of the angle iron rested on the floor behind, and it stuck out in front of the floor another 8" or so.

I used a bottle jack on the front of the angle iron and pulled the old bolts up and out. It was pretty easy to do, but I found that each bolt needed time before it would come loose. Basically I would pump up the jack so there was a fair amount of pressure on the whole thing, climb down, whack the ballast keel a couple of times and here a big bang. Usually after that I could pull the bolts out by hand.

Using this technique you do screw up the floors some, and you could either cut the top off them and put a new piece in place, or replace the whole thing. Mine needed replacing anyway. Iron and White Oak don't like each other...

Good luck, and if you need clarification I can try to explain things better.

Noah