I have glued and stapled a short strip of bicycle tire on a SOF before and , of course, I didn't care how bad it looked.

: Steve, when you say "keel area" do you mean just the two wear
: spots at the bow and stern or are you talking about the entire area under
: water? Fuzzy Dynel works at the bow and stern (plastic wrap it while it
: cures) but two layers of the stuff will honestly stick up about 3/32"
: -1/8" and look like a wet t-shirt unless you coat it with
: something(paint, graphite/epoxy/aluminum powder). If you want something
: that will still allow the color of the wood to show through then multible
: layers of 4oz s-glass strips is very durable. I made a boat with 7 layers
: tapering from 2" to 1/2" wide just at the bow. I don't think it
: makes much sense to put a strip of something down the full length of the
: keel since lots of gouging occurs off-center. Putting some kind of
: synthetic over the whole hull bottom would be a waste of epoxy,,,I did it
: once. You could always attach a 12" strip of 3/8" half oval
: brass ,,,I'm still tempted to carve a recess in the keel ends and epoxy a
: piece of nylon cord in it.