decks are all glassed, cover is off...

finally, about 5 months of living under that cover working on the decks and its done!! Areas were recored and faired and every inch got a layer of 15oz biaxial fabric. attached is three photos of the boat. one is a small deck repair on the flybridge, the other two are of the outside, one right after the cover came off and the other after handrails that were attached to the flybridge were removed as well as the tape trim. My good friend dan lee has been helping me a bunch with everything, specially all the wood work on the outside. Im really excited to finish that up and start painting the topsides. meanwhile the hull is telling me to sand it with 800Grit and buff it.. need to do some gelcoat repairs on it because I dont want to paint the whole hull. BA

new core

here are two shots of the new core on the port side of bye all. the core material is douglas fir end grain. I used a chop saw and cut them to .650. I used west system 105/205 with the 406 add. its solid now. doing the same on the starboard aft quater and any other spot that contains over 15% moisture reading.

core removed

here are two photos of the decks with an area of the core removed. the next step is to prep it for epoxy and cut new core to fit. my biggest problem right now is the tempature.. epoxy needs 40 degrees to cure and at night it will be too cold and wont kick. looks like ive got to wait a few days... this weekend this section will be done.

deck repair

So I spend the winter removing the teak decks off BYE ALL, now that they are gone I ran a moisture meter over the core to see what I really had. I found alot of wet wood so I took the ol skillsaw and opened up the top layer or 1/8 inch glass. I found teak hardwood blocks about 4 inches sq. A few peices of plywood too. First I thought I could dry it out, so I put some fans on the decks and about 1 wk later not much improvement. If it was a balsa core it would probably have been rotten, but the end grain balsa would dry much faster then side grain teak. I purchased a 105C kit from midwest supply (5gal of west system) and last night I started with removing some core on the port side by the aft trunk. Ive spoke with Tom H. quiet a bit at Gougeon Brothers. He had many helpful ideas for this project. Im going to buy some half inch ply from home depot and cut it into 4 inch blocks and us the 105/205 with some 406 for bonding the new core to the existing layer of glass. after that I will rebond the top layer of 1/8 inch glass to the new core and do a 12:1 to make a strong structrual bond on the top later of the glass. I will follow up with a single layer of 15oz biaxial cloth and then paint nonskid.

here are a few photos of what ive been doing

short post

my friend dan lee gave me two teak name boards off his trawler that he sold. so i striped the boards down and we put them in the HAAS mill and ta da.. i think im going to paint the inside of the letters white.

the boiler is almost running.. tuchy subject... its taken way to long seeing as winters half overwith and its not going yet... im 5 weeks into a 2 week project. i will be a strict DIY now.. no more hiring work out no matter the task. live a learn i guess..

snow!

we were under a lake effect snow warning all weekend, 30mph winds and 2 feet of snow. I cleaned the boat and continued working on the decks. heres a few photos..