Someone's Already Been Here

I had a few hours tonight and decided that instead of grinding bevels in the remaining side deck in preparation for the new core, I would get started cutting out the decks adjacent and aft of the cockpit.  My reasoning is that I just don't think I have it in me to do more than one full shed vacuum before I finish the core job.  So I am going to cut out all the remaining deck area at once and just have one big marathon bevel grinding session and accompanying cleanup.  Then I'll cut and install the rest of the core.

So I broke out the skill saw and vibrating cutter and got started. It's a little tight in the areas adjacent and aft of the cockpit so it was fairly slow going.  The bright side was that having the cockpit to work from and stand up in was much easier than crawling around the foredeck.  I cut out a little less than half the remaining deck before light started to get scarce and pulled up the top skin only to find... plywood.  It dawned on me that the previous owner had told me that he had re-cored some of the aft deck, but I didn't realize the extent that was done.  I haven't gotten to the starboard side yet, but the port side ran all the way aft from the winch pad location.

Mmmmm, old smelly plywood.

Halfway there!

Unfortunately, all of the plywood core was soaking wet and poorly adhered to both the top and bottom skins.  In other words; junk.  It looked like the previous owner had not taken too much care to over-drill deck hardware holes in the stern rail, winch pad and a number of other items.  The result was not good.  Oddly enough, the plywood didn't hold up as well as most of the balsa that was at least 25 years older.

Next up... the starboard side where I expect much the same.  Then onto the dreaded bevel hell.

Slow Going

Life has been pretty busy the past few weeks so I haven't gotten anything done (on the boat anyway). About the only thing I have had time to do was to order sandpaper and tyvek suits with hoods to keep the itchy fiberglass dust at bay.

Fortunately I had a few hours to spend today so I got back to the forward cabin top. I had finished up a few weeks back by identifying some of the bad areas (or so I thought). As it turned out, not all were bad. In fact only 2 areas actually had water in the core, but a few of the others I had to pull the core out anyway because when I pulled up the top skin, it yanked half of the core out with it.

I am pretty happy with the lack of work I need to do in this area. I know there will be lots more to do and any time I can save is a good thing.

While I was cutting out the area around the starboard hatch hinge, I kept finding more wet core, so I kept cutting out a larger area to find the extent of the water infiltration. I eventually butted up against the solid core under the mast step that runs the width of the cabin top. It turns out that the water was mostly coming from a wiring chase that straddles the solid deck and the cored area. Two of the pictures show the exposed solid core. It was cool to see what I had sounded and drilled and know for certain that it was exactly what I had thought it was. It's also good to know that I won't have to deal with recoring the step or rebuilding the deck beam. Now I know for certain that these areas are solid (I had previously inspected the deck beam and found that it is oak with a 1/4" steel box beam for added support. I don't know if this is original or not.

Next up is to feather the edges of the mess I have created and get down to Mertons in Springfield to pick up epoxy and core materials. I hope to get down to Springfield in a week or two and then get ready for the 'week of doom' (I'm taking a week off work to focus on the boat sometime in April).