Things That Suck

I think I have found a something that sucks right up there with cancer, fried liver, and Keanu Reeves acting ability. This sucky something is grinding a scarf joint along the edge of the deck that was removed. This will allow me to be able to lay new layers of cloth down that will mechanically 'tie' the new skin in with the old.

It took a lot longer than I thought (maybe the grinder was dull) and it just throws itchy dust everywhere. The only saving grace was that the old Makita 4" angle grinder works great as always.

An added note was that last night we were supposed to change the clocks and move them forward an hour. I thought my wife had done it and she thought I had done it (neither of us did). To make a long story short, my wife was out for a run and wasn't around so I had to jump in the car to take my daughter down to a birthday party right after finishing grinding. Even with a full face mask respirator and a tyvek suit, I was still covered in itchy dust. I'm sure the other mother's at the dance studio (where the birthday party was) were less than impressed.

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).

Mining for gold?

With the aft cabin top removal behind me (literally), I focused my attention on the forward cabin top for this weekend. I didn't have a ton of time to work this weekend so I didn't really finish what I had started, but now that it is light a bit later, I hope to finish up during the week.

I was really surprised at the condition of the core when I opened up the aft cabin top last weekend and expected it to be much worse than it turned out to be. I really didn't need to pull the entire top, I could have just removed the starboard side and would have been fine. Oh well, lesson learned... So with that in mind I decided to take a slightly different approach on the forward cabin top.

But first, I needed to tackle the one remaining piece of deck 'hardware' on the boat: the stovepipe through the deck thingy. I had no idea how it was attached and from what I could tell, it was a big chunk of rounded mahogany bolted and glued to the deck and one of the dorade vents. On the top there was a very rusty stovepipe fitting that has a little 'moat' around it that when filled with water is intended to keep the surrounding deck from catching fire. Kind of a neat idea, but I never had a stove to hook up to it, so I don't know if it really did work.

I like the idea of a stove on board, but I can only imagine the mess a wood stove on a boat would make (we partially heat our house with a woodstove and it is a challenge to keep things tidy). Very romantic yes, but practical, not so much... I would like to replace it with a diesel heater something like this:

http://www.dickinsonmarine.com

In any event, the original installation has some problems and it has to go. The first issue is that it is a rusty, leaky mess. The second is that instead of going straight up through the deck, it elbows into the head and then goes up through the deck there. In theory it is a nice idea to move some warmth into the head and forward areas of the cabin, but I can imagine getting some horrific burns while attempting to maneuver in the head. It would not be pretty.

So, armed with a prybar, hammer and drill I set out to pull the assembly off. I had to drill out the moat thingy because the screws were just rusty lumps. It was bedded with something god awful sticky but was able to pry it off with a large screwdriver and hammer once the screws were drilled out.

Once that was off, the screws that affixed the mahogany piece to the deck were revealed. They backed out easily and then was able to pry the mahogany off in several pieces. The sticky stuff holding it down was so tenacious that it ripped out an inch or so chunk of the dorade's gel coat and exposed down to the underlying cloth layup. Once everything was off, the original non-skid deck pattern was exposed (and in good shape).

Another thing that was quickly apparent was that the original installer did little (if anything) to protect the core. It was all exposed directly and quite wet.

With that mess wrapped up, I focused back on the decks. As I said before, I was going to take a different approach to this section. I didn't think there were as many issues on this section (not noticeably spongy), so I didn't assume that the entire core was junk and just rip it out.

Here I took a 1/4" bit and drilled a patchwork of holes in a semi-planned pattern where each hole was roughly 5 or 6 inches apart. Not surprisingly, the problems only turned up around areas where there had been deck fittings. So I marked off those areas to be cut out later this week and will leave the rest of the holes to be refilled and faired (not sure if these should be beveled; will have to find out best approach for that). One thing that was surprising was that there was no core underneath the mast step or anywhere along the beam that runs the width of the cabin top where the mast step lives. It is solid glass and looks to be about 10 inches wide. That was good news, I didn't want to have to get in there and mess with that if I didn't have to. I think I saw that one of Tim Lackey's projects (http://www.lackeysailing.com) dealt with a bad core issue underneath the mast step. The pictures below show the bad areas marked along with the solid glass area underneath the mast step. Hopefully I'll get to cutting those bad areas out this week.

Decisions, Decisions

After bracing up the main cabin last week I was able to remove the rest of the top without worrying about falling through or distorting the curve of the cabintop. The big surprise was that the entire port side was in great shape... perfect, so I really didn't need to remove it. Yet the starboard side was a wet rotten mess and I dug it all out (and under the remaining deck skin).  It was really difficult to remove the top skin and now that I have I can see that somebody had taken the time to fill all the through deck screw holes with epoxy and then retapped for the screws and bolts (See second picture below). The same can't be said for the starboard side and is exactly why that area is rotten.

Because the port section of core is perfectly good and pulling it up would be a real pain, I think I am going to leave it in place but enlarge the areas of the through deck screws to make room for a plug of solid glass layup (See first picture below).   Armed with the new Dremel Multimax I was able to easily cut out the squares I needed around some of the existing through deck holes.  I'll finish up the rest of them this week.  I had heard mixed reviews about the Multimax but given that the Fein was completely out of the question (way to costly), I decided to go for it.  So far it works great and I haven't had any of the issues that I had read about in some of the reviews online.

I hope this won't be a mistake leaving this part of the core in place (I have several opinions for doing either), but I guess I'll find out.  I don't think that I will find alot of good core on other areas of the boat, so I don't believe this is a decision I'll have to make very often.   Next week I'll be putting more bracing in for the forward cabintop and start beveling the edges of the cuts for tabbing in the new skin when the time comes.

Building Deck Supports Amid a Frozen Hellscape

Last week I started cutting the top skin off the cabin top in preparation for the recore project, but quickly discovered how weak the underlying bottom skin is once the top skin and core are removed.  I was concerned that if I removed too much of the deck I would distort the shape of the cabin top and weaken it structurally.   I got some good advice on building deck support frames from inside the cabin from a bunch of folks over at http://www.plasticclassicforum.com and decided that I would have to get this in place before I continued removing the core.   

Unfortunately, the warmish weather earlier this week (35-40) didn't last and an artic cold front moved into the region on Friday.  When I woke up Saturday morning, the temp was -8 degrees F. and the predicted high for the day was under 15 degrees F.  Not really the kind of weather you want to be working outside in.  I loaded up on coffee and spent extra time hovering around the woodstove before I finally got up the courage to get started.   I fired up the salamander heater, but since I was working inside the boat, it didn't seem to do much good.  I probably got the shed up close to freezing, but I don't think I got the interior of the boat even close to that... I had to work fast or my fingers would be a mess.

I started off by cutting a few 2x6 boards to about 55" and then dragged my wife out to hold them up so I could scribe the curve of the cabintop onto the boards.  I used to use a standard pencil compass to scribe, but have since found that finding any kind of plastic circle that has a diameter greater than the arc you need, with a hole in the center that a pencil will fit snuggly in works best (See picture, here I used an old water bottle top).   

Once I scribed the lines to the boards I simply cut out the arc from the board with a sabresaw and cleaned it up with a shinto saw rasp (a most excellent tool).   Next I cut a bunch of 1x4s the length of the cabin I need to support and screwed them to the 2x6s.  I put a few strips of foam sill gasket on the top of the frame so there wouldn't be any hard spots from the frame on the headliner.  

To get it in place I cut a 3 2x3s to roughly the height I would need to wedge them in place and then basically balanced the whole thing on my head while I wegded the 2x3s into the corners.  Once stable I screwed the 2x3s to the frame and cut a few more to provide more support (See pictures below for a better explanation).  

By this time I was absolutely frozen and my fingers were quite numb.  Thats all for this weekend, next week I will provide a few more supports for the forward cabintop (this area is better supported so it doesn't need to be as elaborate as the main cabin).  Then I can go to town ripping the rest of the cabintop off.  I am planning picking up a Dremel Multimax this week to help dig out some of the more tenacious core.  

Itchy and Scratchy

Not sure who this monkey is, but he sure has a stylin 3M 6900 Full Face Respirator with some sweet pink particulate filters. In the past I have done some really stupid things when working around dangerous debris, chemicals, etc... and decided that this time I would invest in a quality respirator, instead of using those cheapo dust masks that really don't do much of anything except remind me how bad my breath is. It worked really well, no fogging problems and the strap system keeps a tight seal with no discomfort.


I finally got everything I needed to remove from the boat finished (almost of course) and decided it was time to man-up and set the circular saw loose on the decks. I had considered using the rotozip with a tile cutting bit but had heard mixed reviews so I stuck with the circular saw. I'm not sure how much I will open up at one time before actually recoring with new balsa, but my thoughts right now are to manage it by section. So, start with the cabin top around the companionway, then move forward to the mast step area, and then move onto the side and foredecks.

I am pretty pleased with how easy it was to open up (I wish the same could be said in reverse). I was a bit limited because my saw didn't have a full charge in the battery (Note to self: buy another 18v battery), so I really only tackled about 1/3 of the cabin top around the compainionway. The skins came off with very little struggle, and as expected, a good portion of the balsa was pretty much mush and could be yanked out easily. What I didn't expect was how much of the balsa was still intact and in good shape. Not sure what I should do about it, I hate to yank it if it is still good, but it might be more difficult trying to match them up... I don't know.

Here are a few pictures from what I did; note that the balsa that was saturated is much darker in color, the lighter stuff looks brand new and if I decide to rip it out, I think it will be a hard job.














First cuts with the circular saw above... A very scary few minutes. Cutting your
boat with a circular saw is not for the faint of heart.















Note the dark areas; those are waterlogged.
The lighter wood seems to be dry and seem
to be well bonded to the bottom skin.

This is the waterlogged mess I pulled out.
Wherever the balsa was wet, it came out with
virtually no effort. See the skins above the
pile of wood. By the way, it is not end grain
balsa, it looks like it is 2" strips with a grain
pattern that goes with the length.












The final picture above is what I finished with. About 3/4 of the balsa was removed,
and I left only what I felt was 'the good stuff'. I may end up removing that later when
I finish pulling the skin off that section of the cabin top.

Nasty

Talk about horrific. I don't know what happened or how I managed to forget that the holding tank (bladder) had about 3 or 4 gallons of urine and poop in it when I hauled it 3 years ago, but late last week it dawned on me that this was the case. I was planning on my next steps for the recore and was measuring the underside of the foredeck to setup a bracing framework and it hit me... Had I had it pumped before I hauled the boat in 07? Ohhhhh Noooooooo. I opened the hatch underneath the v-berth and sure enough, the bladder was not empty. The good news was that it was not full and it has been so cold that it was frozen. The bad news was that the bladder was frozen flat about 20" wide by 6" high, and the only access to that compartment was about 10" wide by 10" high. I really didn't want to have to cut it out through the top of the v-berth bunk, so I rested my hopes on being able to fold and wiggle the bladder out through the access hatch even though it was frozen. There are 2, 1-1/2" lines into the bladder (1 from the head and 1 to deck pumpout) that I couldn't free up so I cut through them with a hacksaw. When I sawed into the first one I heard a loud 'pfffffffffft'. A second later I was overcome by one of the nastiest smells I have ever been subjected to. Just awful. I can't even imagine what it would have smelled like if I had waited until a warm summer day. Armed with an urgency that can only be found in the desperate, I ripped through the rest of the first one and quickly cut the second one before I backed my head out. I found a pair of rubber gloves in the galley and duct taped them over the cut hose fittings and stepped out for some air and dry heaves. To make matters worse, I was now faced with somehow getting the bladder out of an opening smaller than the bladder. Sadly, I seem to run into the square peg round hole thing more than I care to admit. So I decided to blow some heat into the compartment with my milwaukee heat gun to soften up the stew in the bladder so I could hopefully fold it up and wriggle it out. Probably not the best way to keep the smell down but it did the trick. Being as careful as I could, I folded and tugged the bladder out of the compartment without rupturing it and causing me to abandon this restoration project entirely. Once I got it out of the boat I promptly took it outside the shed, cut the rubber gloves off and turned it upside-down in a snowbank and let nature take its course.

That was enough for today. Time for a long shower. Before I tackled the holding tank project I did manage to get the final pieces of woodwork off of the companionway.