Work Day 19

It has been far too long since I have made an entry. But I have been working none the less. This last 2 weeks, considerable progress has been made on the boat. The Cabin: I sealed in the floor and finally secured the cabin. Well so I thought, the rainstorm came right after I sealed it and proved pretty well that it was not as sealed as it could be. It was obvious in the front and rear gaps on the floorboard that there was water leaking in. This became evident when I pushed the boat under a tree for shade and head what sounded like 5 gallons of water trapped beneath the floor boards. It was confirmed when I stuck my hands down the forward bilge and found the seal there was broken as well. The prospect of ripping up the floor again was not exciting. So I chose to drill two holes on the starboard side at low points. Drain out all the water with a shop vac and then seal it up from the top down. So far my strategy has worked. One of the drilled holes is completely dry now, and one is still leaking a little. I am drying them out for two weeks right now. I bought some special caulking to seal all the forward and rear gaps on the floor boards. The other major concern was the side wall since it was potential leaking source as well. So I took the fairing compound and sealed the entire wall up to the floor board. This proved to work, but the sanding was going to take a long time if I wanted to get the wall flat. It is still a work in progress. I realized I needed to take care of the painting outside first then put up the mast, then seal the cabin with a proper fabric cover. At that point I can pick back up on cabin work.

Work Day 18

Did quite a bit of work during the week lining up the floor and dropping in the bilge box securely.  However, it was slow going because although I had free time, the temps were well over 100 for most of the day. Not the ideal time to be sweating and in the sun.  But when the sun set rest assured I was out working.  securely placed the bilge to the forward bulkhead and hull floor as well as waterproofed it.  Dumped a soda bottle full of water in to wait and sea it leaked at all.  Though there was some slight seepage up front I quickly sealed the leak and now have a functioning bilge.  I took the time not to seal the floor because what good is a floor if there is a leaky bilge!  

Instead of sealing the floor in because I was waiting on the bilge to dry I took a crack at the starboard side stripping job.  I was pretty confident that a second try with all the experience from the first side would make the job go quicker.  Though this is true still did not accomplish all of it this weekend.  I attacked it three separate times.  First, I painted the boat with stripper including some special aqua strip I order from a boat supplier.  Then sealed up the stripper and paint with a plastic layer and tape. This was to keep the moisture in and prevent it from drying out.  Then I simply waited 12 hours for it to really work.  This was a pretty effective method for stripping first layer of green paint off.  It came off easily the next day for the entire right side bow to stern.  The only areas that were tough were areas exposed to air. You could tell because it was white and dried out as opposed to darker and moist.  Now after I had all the green paint off I set in to doing the tedious stripping of the biocide.  Had the time to apply three more layers of stripping gel and scrape. Would say it is down to about 25% or less on all surfaces.   Will probably take another 3-5 hours to clean it up stem to stern.  Forgot to mention I also did not strip the above waterline paint because it would be messy, easy and unnecessary.  I will leave it up until the very end.  After I clean up the bottom I will strip the top, should take an hour tops.

After I clean it up the plan is wash down the boat.  Then to take a day in a full protective suit and mask and sand with 80 grit paper the entire boat.  Especially getting rid of low areas or areas where I nicked the boat with the scraper. It is a very sharp took use for removing carpet goo or vinyl tile glue.  So great at what it does but occasionally the blade will chip and indent into the boat.  The other thing will need to do is then cover the boat with solvent wash before painting it. This will be right before I paint though.  Painting will hopefully occur next weekend.  One of two strategies for that.  Have a bunch of guys come over and move the boat forward 3 inches to get at areas previously not paintable.  Or, take it to local powerboat shop and use their 2 ton crane.  They offered it if the boat would fit in the workshop.  Just need to follow up with them during the week.  The trick will be fast application.  The instructions say that the barrier coat needs to dry 24-36 hours and then be sanded with 220 grit paper in order to prep for VC17(as it is very thin).  The issue is that means I would need to use the crane twice.  Then would come back at it with the vc 17. I might end up painting all the boat and then sanding and using the crane just for the part that was covered applying new paint on the spot.

The goal will be to seal up the deck here sometime during the week in between thunderstorms. Then I can start talking with local cabinet shop about planing my wood to veneers so I can apply it to the cabin. Also learned an interesting thing this weekend, I might have wood long enough to replace the entire side cabin walls. Which would be pretty appealing if I could.  

Well that should keep me pretty busy for now. Working on a rough target date for water trials over fourth of july weekend but that would be pretty ambitious with all the cabin work and painting to be done.

Work Day 17

Today I took a break from the anals of scraping the paint off.  Though the back isn't all scraped I decided it was time to move the boat to a closer location.  After a recent Tornado we had to cut down one of the trees in our backyard.  The yard backs up to a dried up city lake. It only fills when it rains and is promptly emptied by a pump into farm fields.  So we took the initiative and moved the boat to the backyard!!! Great commute to work on the boat, on the flip side it stares back everyday begging for attention during the work week.

Before I moved the boat I decided to put 2-3 more layers of fairing on the cabin deck that I was going to drop in.  This took a lot of time and actually had to order more epoxy.  After the 2nd coat and copious amounts of sanding I figured it was good enough to drop in the boat.  I would eventually have to put another layer on to seal the deck to the sides of the hull.  At that point we can focus on the really fine sanding.

The first few days we left it on the driveway because it would be close to power sources for wood work.  I began fitting the floor this weekend and working with the final install boards before I seal the floor in.  First I had to build a forward bulkhead from scratch and then a smaller forward bulkhead where the floor would rest on.  In the process of this I realized that there was an error made when I attached the front cargo support several weeks ago.  I had not left a spot for the bulkhead to sit flush under the forward cargo cabin.  So had to sand and laboriously cut at odd hull angles to get 3/4" off of the main support and the bulkhead to sit flush.

The process of leveling and sanding the different floor supports took about 2 hours.  Unfortunately the forward support that I made today was trimmed down too small on the final cut.  So had to start over from scratch with a new board. Luckily when I trimmed this one a little more precisely it fit and the floor of the boat dropped in and did not move.

This is the small bulkhead that I will trim down as the floor support.

You can see the gap here as it does not sit flush...hopefully will filler it

The main bulkhead

Boat in the back yard, you can see the wood from the chopped tree

Though my goal was to seal up the floor forward cabin this weekend I would rather take my time as this is a critical phase.  So everything fits now its just a matter of getting a few days to drop in the deck and set the forward bulkheads.  The bulkheads will take one day to set then the floor will be epoxied in the following day.  At that point there will finally be no more bailing water out of the boat every time it rains!!! This is because I will have the bilge installed!

Work Day 16

Have not been making entries in a long time.  Been busy on both the boat and work.  So here is a quick catch up from three weeks ago.  I tackled the port side paint stripping to see how difficult it was going to be for the whole boat.


The boat was in a storage yard to facilitate doing this outside.  I rented a generator for the weekend so I could sand down the parts I could not get off.  Enlisted some labor from my good friend michael who was quite the worker helping me scrape off.

I spent all of Saturday and Sunday scraping away and got almost all of it off. It took me about 3 hours to go from the bow to the first support.  I started by sanding more then scraping and that was a mistake. Coming back on Sunday.  What we discovered was using the citristrip from local home improvement store in mass quantities stripped off the paint easily.  You will have to come back at a section about three times with the citristrip and then use a 4" razor blade scraper to sheer it off the hull.  This seemed to be a clean method and perforable.  The sanding tended to go too deep in some spots which was apparent when daylight began to shine through the gel coat.  Luckily there are only two or three spots like that.

At the end of the weekend I had done every thing but the stern on the port side.  When I finish the stern will need to come back with a finer grit sandpaper and sand it down and use solvent prep to wash away any chemicals left. Then sand one more time and apply the primer/epoxy barrier coat.  This will be done in the next month.  Still debating on how to get to the keel bottom and the parts on the trailer I cannot touch.

First crack at sanding the keel.

Found a repair made on the side of the hull above the water line

Above the waterline came off very easily

Never forget PPE even though it will make you sweat taking breaks every 20 mins

Keel after day one

Bottom after Day 2

What will be left for trimming and moving the boat when we paint

Beginning on saturday

Work Day 15

First today I tackled the newly layered cabin floor with the fiberglass.  I began to use west systems microfiller to level the ridges and paint the floor.  Unfortunately I ran out of epoxy before I could finish, but it was clear it was working.  So the game plan is to buy a gallon of epoxy in order to lay up the wood decks.  When I get this new epoxy I will finish the other half ot the cabin floor. Then sand down the high points, and follow with one more micro filler level.  This of course will happen sometime late next week because I will need wait for new epoxy.

I checked up on the center forward cabin and it is solidly in place and ready to bare loads.  So with that I had a friend pull the boat out the shop and into the storage yard. The reason for this was to save money and begin to work on painting prep while I wait for the epoxy.  

The painting prep requires scraping of the green under paint and the copper oxide.  So I started by spending one hour on the port side keel up to the waterline.  I started by spraying paint stripper on the green under body paint then using the paint scraper to get paint off. I laid down a tarp to catch most of the pain instead of it falling on the ground.  I was able to get most of the green paint off but not the cuperous oxide, the really toxic crap.  I will try to scrape all the green paint off because it really gunks up the sander and then sand down all the oxide in one day for one side.  I learned this when dealing with the machined hole repair because I had to sand away the green paint around the lowest hole.  This took forever. With it scraped away I can get straight to the copper oxide.  The goal will be to sand down to the white layer which is a barrier coat from the 1970s.  Then apply epoxy barrier atop that and begin to paint.  

After an hour of scrubbing the white, is what the goal is

the non vertical portion below the waterline was significantly harder to scrape 

As a sample I scraped above the water line, and it was much easier.

So the total scraping area I did today was I about 1/5 of the port side.  So, I would expect the entire port side to take 5 hours to scrape.  Ran out of paint stripper after this area so I will go buy a gallon or so before I do the entire side.  After the entire side is stripped a day with full paint suit sander, vapor mask and glasses will ensue.  This should prep the boat to lay down epoxy barrier coating. Then of course there is the starboard side to prep.  So this is easily a full weekend of just paint prep.  

Work is picking up so I will have to wait a few weekends and try to knock out the paint prep in one weekend.  Then the goal is to have it in the water by memorial day weekend for a shake down cruise.

Work Day 14

Today I did two major things:
1.  Finished laying down fiberglass 24 oz layers on the boat floor made of plywood.  This created the laminate thickness of 1/8" that is required for the floor. Then I waited for it to dry. I left the fiberglass to hang over the ends, this way when I lay it in the cabin it will bond to the side of the boat easier.  You can see in the picture below the layers do not stretch the entirety of the wood but it makes for a strong center.

 Below is a zoomed in shot of the overlap area on the right.  Notice the air buble/uneven surfaces.  The reason for these was the first layer of thin fiberglass I laid down. It did not lay down flat and then I laid it down and let it dry. This meant an uneven surface when laying down the heavy weight fiberglass.  The thing that I learned is you need to lay all the layers down at once in order to squeegee the air out of the fiberglass.  The strategy for eliminating these will be to grind them down with sander and then add filler over and around them

the edge of the fiberglass wowing

The second thing I did was epoxy in the forward piece into the cabin.  I laid epoxy in the bottom support first, then placed duck tape along the length of the cut line on the underside.  In this way I simply had to drop epoxy into the crack to cure.  Then wait for it to dry and remove or leave the duck tape. Though there was a little residual epoxy left on the surface I will sand it away when I repaint the floor and the forward hatch area.  I secured the surface with metal clamps, this way I made the sides meet evenly with no major dips. Dips below can be filled up, but if the center piece is too high it cannot be faired down.  After the initial lay up of epoxy, I will add another batch to bring it up to the surface level.

I will come back tomorrow and deal with these things when they are dry.

Work Day 13

Today I started to lay in more cabin floor supports. The big issue was dealing with the forward supports.  Trying to understand how they would fit together with the bilge, as well as actually making them the correct height so the bilge and the floor are at the same level.  So I began by cutting down the front bulkhead and the other support to the correct size. Then I laid up the rear support with epoxy so it could set in.  before laying up the forward support I need to do two things.  Shave down the bilge so the cut I made on the front is even.  Second is to install the forward cabin top again.  After placing the forward cabin top, it became clear it was going to sit on top of the bulkhead for support. So had to keep that in mind while placing it.

rear support and forward bulkhead

You can see the gap at the bottom because of the uneven cut

Preparing the forward cabin floor by attaching mast support piece.  

Basically laid up epoxy and fiberglass CSM to make sure this was attached. Then will just have to drop it in the pre made space to lay it up evenly.

Took a preview stab at stripping the keel to see what it was going to be like. I sprayed some compressed stripper on the keel and then went at it three coats worth with a stripper knife.  As you can see not very easy. This was 20 mins worth of work....So it will take a lot. But there is big value to stripping then sanding, as best I can tell, the green paint gunks up the sanding discs way faster then anything. The green paint is what I can get off pretty easily as well.

So next work day, dropping in the forward cabin floor.  And beginning to sand!

Work Day 12

Today started to tackle the floor installation. It has been a little slow because I realized I would need a lot more fiberglass in order to create a laminate layer on the cabin floor. Combined with the 20 degree weather not being friendly to epoxy there has not been much progress. Yesterday it started to warm up again so I jumped out and started getting the deck ready and laying up the keel.

First the floor supports.  I had to finish by grinding back the rest of the floor left on the aft wall of the cabin.  Once this was done I sized up the floor support we cut.  Turns out we left it 3/4" too high, this would take a long time to sand so I simply ran over to wood shop and cut it down.  Then I laid it in with west system 610 epoxy.  The first day I capped the epoxy tube hoping to use it again, that was a joke.  I came back the next day to do some lay up work and it was not even budging.  So I think you have to use the tube all at once.  Anyway after coming back to the support the next day it seemed solid.

So I began to lay the second support. This would be the first challenge since it was free standing. When we cut these with a sawcaz(our first mistake, should have used a jig saw) our cuts left some gaps between cabin and wood.  I figured I could fill it with epoxy, which was true to a point.  But it was clear the gaps would eat up a lot of the epoxy glue.  Balance when laying the second support was critical because this would determine slope of the floor.  The level indicated a down hill toward the bow, which I was ok with because that would assure water flowed to the bilge.  The deck plywood was already bowing a little so it would hopefully drop it there.  The one angle I am worried about is how flat the top of the second support is. If it sits at a forward or backward angle it will be impossible to lay a deck on it unless I sand it down and increase the downward slope (which will be added down the line).

Day 1 laying in the aft support to the wall

using the wood atop kept the second support standing upright during the gluing process.

Here you can see the third support(not laid just placed) backs up to the bilge.  

Before laying down the third support I wanted to figure out the bilge situation and replace the forward cabin floor.  Because that wall will be critical to determining positioning.  So I think I will lay the third support tomorrow.  Plus I need to shave off 3/4" on it. Oddly enough the second support did not require a 3/4" cut to make it level.  At the forward end of the bilge will be the wall. But for the wall to be there the forward cabin level needs to be placed.

I will have to devise a way for the forward wall to support the deck floor.  I am thinking of taking plywood extra or maybe a small 2X4 and fiberglassing it in as a lip. Supporting it with fiberglass means I will not have to nail it down and risk ruining plywood integrity.  Also, I believe the fiberglass lip will work, that is how I planning to do the seats.  But I need to place all the other supports first, then figure out what height to put the lip at then check it, then coat with epoxy and fiberglass.


The day before this I finally finished the fiberglass job on the keel!!! Yeah!!!! It is up to the levels I think it should be, I will then coat it in low density filler and sand it to take shape.  I am going to hold off on that job until I paint.  I decieded the same thing with the filler on the machined holes. I grinned down the one hole on the port side and saw that I was really just moving paint around. So when I strip off the paint I will make sure these are flush and good looking!  But the projects are done! Also not pictured, but I did lay up fiberglass and epoxy on the inside of these machined holes for added strength.

This final keel fiberglass job.  One strong girl!

Though you cant tell this is actually smooth to the touch and seamless.  Can't tell where the repair is and the boat begins.

Also, fun side note. My go to supply store has been jamestown distributors....yes I will take my discount for name reference now.  They are good people helping boaters. I called asking about paints for this boat and what the layup strategy should be.  Basically the white stuff that you see around the ground away keel is the original boat gel coat. This was the precursor to epoxy barrier coat. As a result....lucky me I get to grind down to the gel coat and apply an epoxy barrier coat to the entire boat. That will serve as a primer coat then I can paint bottom anti fouling and the top side paint.


Also today I sized up the buoyancy bags in the boat.  Unfortunatly the bow buoyancy bag did not fit in the forward hull.  It would have to be about 2/3 deflated in order to do so.  So I shoved the two long bouancy bags I had up there. They each produce 100 lbs of buoyancy which is only about 75 lbs short of what the bow bag did.  The stern bag fit fine. Which means I am light on buoyancy now but, honestly I don't think its much of a priority for this boat. There is no place to put the buoyancy and it will only be a day sailor on a lake for me. So, not like it needs to be the titanic.  I think it will offset the keel ballast so it will give me time to think while the boat takes on water ha ha..and at $90 a bag for stupid plastic floaties...I am ok not buying more and returning one.

The two forward bags. One on either side of the support.  

The stern bag sitting behind the rudder pipe.

Final task of the day was to tackle the plywood rotting delamination on the forward cabin .  The plywood was pretty dried out by now. So I used the rest of the 610 epoxy tube to essentially pump the wood full of epoxy at different layers. Then I used clamps over night to ensure it stays shut.

You can see from the right side that the wood will be much closer together. This also includes delamination from the fiberglass laminate.

Well that's all for now, waiting for jamestown order to come in with more fiberglass to lay up the laminate on the deck floor, hopefully the epoxy will last. I am about 50% through my gallon kit.

Work Day 11

To be honest this was actually two really short days combined.  One was spent in the wood shop fabricating the next round of wood pieces for the forward cabin core replacement and then the mast reinforcement.  After cutting them out in the shop I took them over to be epoxy laminated.  This included the other sides of the pieces I was already working on.  I foolishly bought more roller brushes, not necessary. I had forgot about  the convenient yellow squeegee that had come with the kit, these things are way better at spreading around epoxy evenly on wood.

The wood laid out, the triangle and rectangle have just been cut but not coated yet.

After coating the wood to dry, I laid up another layer of fiberglass on the keel.  This time I had my CSM(chopped Strand Mat) which was 1 million times easier to bend around the shape of the keel and stick.  On the down side it was less this then the 6oz cloth.  But two or 3 more layups and it will be good to go.

This keel will be able to take any hit by the time I am done with it!

Forgot to include pictures the other work day of the bilge bin that had been sanded down with the angle grinder.  That was a pain to do but it was pretty clean and ready for some fiberglass lay up.  

You can see the fiberglass has been ground down and that the cracks are really obvious.

On day two I actually laid down the glass, it cured really well.  Just laid down one coat on the inside of the tray with a lot of epoxy.  I will drill out the bolt holes later.  I think one layer on the bottom of the box to totally seal and reinforce the cracks and this guy will be as good as new.  Obviously will need to lay up some fairing on there, not sure how I am going to sand this when that happens :(.

You can see how thick it is at the end where the black cracks are.  Epoxy has soaked through the cracks to the other side so I am not too worried.

Next I applied some of the new filler I got shipped in to the fiberglass lay up I did on the hull.  This was the filler I was waiting for, since I ran out of the small patch kit filler.  It had the distinctive maroon color of the filler at the end. I will sand it down when the weather gets better and is not going to rain. Hopefully this will be the last sanding job on these machined holes. 

While I am on the subject of the hull, I got a little restless at Lowes and bought some paint stripper in a spray paint can while I was picking up some solvent prep for the epoxy.  I tried it on the hull with my paint stripper iron just to see what I was in for in the future.  Not a pretty site, its going to be nasty and messy.  Though the stripper worked to get the green off, it left the copper oxide on and in tact. That will have to be sanded away, which will be dangerous and nasty.  Maybe I will have to do that back at the storage facility where its just rocks on the ground and no one will be around to breathe it in.  

This is after two or three paint scrapes to the area I applied the stripper.

Next I decieded to work inside where it was warm, which was both required and appreciated. The outside temp was 50 degrees which is on the border low end for mixing and applying epoxy.  So inside where it was nice and 70 in the shop I mixed away.  It occured to me that the cabin floor would need a laminate made, this would probably be easier to do outside of the boat(seems like a messy task once its installed).  So I figure I will lay up the main laminate and then install it in the boat, then finally add the filler once its installed to paint.  This way I can still mount anything that needs to be done.  

So I laid up the remeaning fiberglass weaving I had to make one layer on the center portion of the deck.    After coating this layer I realized I would need at least 3-4 lay ups for this to become a laminate.  I started with 6 oz fabric.  From reading on line I need at to alternate layers using CSM and woven for 3-4 layers ending with really heavy layer on top.  Rookie mistake realizing this after, apperently its hard to bond multiple layers after the first woven layer has dried, becuase of all the bumpy surfaces.  But not too woried, nothing a little epoxy cant fix. Speaking of which we are about half way throught the gallon kit. Less then thrilled about that seeing as I still have to install the the dang thing and do 2-3 more layers on the cabin floor.  But if I need another one I will buy it.

The layout, I figured I could get the edges when I install CSM to the side of the hull.

After it was soaked in epoxy

A nasty corner of strands that came undone, but you can see how flat the rest is.

While I was inside I also thought it was time to hitch on the forward cabin laminate to the new core. I tried to save the laminate because I knew it would be a pain in the ass to remake it, as evidenced by this cabin floor business.  To do this I sanded down as much of the laminate as possible to make it flat.  There was some old epoxy that was just not leaving (maybe 1/8" in some places).  So I used some high density epoxy thickener to fill in the gaps and then clamped the whole thing down to cure.  Seems to have worked pretty well because epoxy came out the sides and in the screw holes from the center.  Hope it sticks!!!

My clipped up contraption

I am debating wether or not to fill one of the fiberglass holes.  The cap for one of them is pretty beat up and I cannot imagine why they installed two of them so close together.  I will just lay in some fiberglass and build it up to the level of the laminate.  Same things with the back edge where the wood is exposed.  This will take a day or two.  This is good because I actually need to dry out the remaining core some more before I bond it to this new core. Not sure how I am going to do that yet, but its a work in progress. I would guess with all the prep work it will be at least another week before I lay this all in the the boat. But 90% prep will make 10% execution go smooth.  

The other thing I should mention is hauling this crap around, I have all sorts of epoxies and cans of solvent that I cannot leave at the shop every day, so the trunk of my car looks like a mobile meth lab in the back. Since security is tight at work, I would prefer not to leave these in the car.  So made a convienent  carry case.

Last thing wanted to talk about is the vision of what the cabin install looks like and the lay up. After setting up the other day a few things occurred,  I will need to cut a hole in the cabin floor that I am glassing up now to make room for the bilge.  The question becomes when, after its installed on top of it, or before hand when its out of the boat or place and then outline and cut.  Also there is a question of elevation positioning.  So going to try to sketch it up real quick and upload it.  I do not profess to have any artistic abilities..