Transom Project 2
|
Transom Project 2 |
Page 9
I haven't had a chance to work on the boat in several weeks, and I only had a half of a day to work this weekend. I have been wanting to finish the work dealing with the stringers on the port side. In order to gain access to them, I have to remove some of the floor above them. Since I had already decided to remove the aft above deck fish boxes, I figured it wouldn't hurt to remove the one on the port side now so that I could get to the stringers beneath.
I used a reciprocating saw with a tungsten carbide blade and my 4.5" high speed grinder to remove the box. I had figured that the floatation foam beneath the box would be waterlogged, but once I removed the top 1/4" of foam it was dry as a bone. I still had to remove the foam anyway to get to the bottom of the hull.
I really think I'll like the extra space in the cockpit of this boat when I'm done. I still have to remove some of the floor in order to access the inner port side stringer.
Today I got a little carried away with the skil saw. I cut up my pristine deck to find out that the deck is the only thing in this boat that didn't rot! I had to remove this section in order to gain access to the port stringers so that I could rebuild them.
This is something interesting. The deck behind the fuel tank is cored with plywood, but the rest of the deck moving forward is cored with a foam (divinycell or kledgecell)
I was also very relieved to find out that the floatation foam was not waterlogged. In fact, it wasn't even damp. I removed two large blocks with a hand saw and they each weighed about 2lbs.
Here is how the disease begins. The wood in this stringer is solid, but still damp. I'd be willing to bet that the whole thing is damp, and I don't feel like tearing up the whole boat to replace a stringer. Back to my point, the moisture in the wood congregated in the voids between the fiberglass and the wood. There the fungus accumulates and begins to break down the wood. The rot process can be treated and stopped with antifreeze, then the surface of the wood can be dried out, and the stringer can be rebuilt. Yes, there is some moisture sealed into the stringer, but it cannot rot any further. Dale Whiteman, a very knowledgeable and experienced professional boat repair man, feels that the wood in a stringer is merely a form on which to build the stringer. If the wood rots in the stringer and the fiberglass shell is still solid, then the strength of the stringer is not compromised.
Dale Whiteman's web pages:
Finally the demolition ends and the rebuilding will begin soon. I used an 80 grit aluminum oxide sanding disk on a high speed grinder to cut back these stringers so that I can splice new wood on to rebuild the stringers. This is called a scarf joint, and I am using a 8:1 bevel to splice the new to the old.
During this process I've added more work to the project. When I removed the small piece of deck, I noticed that it was very heavy. With weight at the stern being a concern, I feel that I can lighten the load a bit more by removing the entire plywood cored deck behind the fuel tank on back. I'll rebuild the deck using NIDA core which is very strong and extremely light weight. I hope to remove close to 100 lbs of weight in the aft of the boat with the NIDA core floor and the removal of the below deck livewell & aft above deck fishboxes.