Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Away from boat renovations for the moment...

Actually 3000 miles away. Back in Ireland for family stuff :-((. No shortage of water but its coming from the sky. As they say "if you can see the mountain its going to rain and if you can't see the mountain, its raining".

Thursday, April 16, 2009

Chain Plates progress

The chain plate project has been bugging me for some time. In this era of super chemicals, magic goop etc, there is no excuse for stuff leaking, especially chain plates.

First I has to check out the existing hole through the deck. WBW made a good job at sealing the core where the chain plate passed through the deck.... almost. When the deck was laid up they removed the balsa in the areas where the holes were going to be and filled it in with polyester (or similar) - that's the white bit on the photo below. Unfortunate the location was a bit off and just touched the balsa on the right of the photo, resulting on a tiny amount of balsa damage. No major problem to cut back the skin and refill with epoxy.



Next the plan. I have always believed that when you steal ideas you should steal from the best. Don Casey (boating guru, buy all his books especially his new one, This Old boat (new ed.)) recommends raising the area around the hole to prevent water seeping below. Another smart person "Gary at gizmology.com" came up with a nice way of epoxying the hole. Surprisingly he cut the tube flush with the deck. I just combined both ideas and produced the following.


Make tube by rolling glass tape around a wooden batten covered in wax paper. Cut tube to size. Stick in hole in deck and pour thickened epoxy around.




Re-attach shroud, tension in order to find final resting place of the chain plate, squirt in Sikaflex 291 and paint the area to protect the epoxy. QED.



Thursday, April 2, 2009

Mysterious objects.....




These are that pads that are glued to the deck covering the chain plates. They appear to be made of butyl or similar and have held up pretty well in 30 years in the Florida sun. If anyone has ideas they would be greatly appreciated. I plan to bed the chain plates in Sikaflex 291 but I like the idea of raising the surrounding area.