WEEKEND: Oct 24th 2010 - - Prepping Interior Hull for New Interior

The weather has been nice a cool in Orlando since last week.  So to tack advantage of he changing seasons, I decided to work on the interior, an area I have be dreading because I knew it would begin with a heck of a lot of grinding work.  I was right. As of today I am on day 4 and only 60% done!

I normally would skip this boring part but for your future project boat people it's important you see the good and the itchy side of things...

Tops:

1 - Besides the normal safety gear, some thick sweat pants and sweat shirts with a couple of tee-shirts underneath go a long way to keep you from itching for 12-hours.  I also recommend something to cover your head too...

2 - Ear plugs.  It's was nice not to hear hours of loud grinding noise day after day.  With ear plugs and a powerful fan blowing on you, you can actually think about things besides asking yourself ever 2 minutes. "when am I going to be finished with this grinding darn work"... (PS The answer is usually never!)

Here are some pictures from this weekend and special thanks for the help from my son Kyle Saturday and a local guy I met named Daryl.

Ok. Lets do so sweeping and clean up the 1" layered dusk covering everything And that is just an hours worth.

I'm so tired I can climb down the latter after a 9 hr day.  I need a COLD SHOWER BIG TIME!

We made a vow to never mentioned the word "itch" again after today...

OK HERE ARE SOME PICTURES AFTER 10 WEEKENDS OF GRINDING

I learned one thing, "your never done with grinding"...  Thats a fact of life in restoring boats.

WEEKEND 31-40: Priming the Hull

It was time to put a couple coats of primer on the hull and deck.  I must admit it sure did look great until I ending up sanding both those coats off.

Time to put her to bed for a while.  I bought a new house and ending up taking  a year off only working on her 3 or 4 times.  Shame on me!

The next blog is all current activities beginning with grinding the hull interior to take advantage of the cool weather for the next four months or so. My goals are to get the flooring and bulkhead walls up before the summer heat of 2011.  

WEEKEND 26-30 : Deck Repairs

Because of the hot summer heat, I decided to begin working on several deck repairs. Especially the large deck hole where the chainplate came through the deck due to the high winds of the hurricane.

If you started at the beginning of my project, you know the rule.  The small holes get a lot larger in order to repair them...

After bracing the deck hole with plywood from underneath wrapped in plastic so the fiberglass/resin would stick to it, I laid a couple layers of fiberglass down first, then cut a piece of 1/2" marine plywood to fit the hole. Then another 4 layers of fiberglass on time of the marine plywood, then a little filler and fairing work and she was solid one again.

When we removed the deck hardware. We also removed he teak toe rail that had the 120+ 8' s/s bolds attaching it to the rail.  When this was removed, it was there was a gap in the middle of the base rail that I am sure leaked.  So I took the time to seal the rail with thicken fiberglass filler, applied clamps every 6' and worked my way around the boat.  

Here you can see I had some lots of screw holes I had to fill on the cabin-sole.

WEEKEND 21-25: Stripping Out the Rest of the Interior

There were a lot of imperfections on the deck caused by fling objects during Hurricane Katrina.

FYI: Gregory didn't hurt himself.  He simply had a minor medical procedure so he needed to cover head with the bandage...  He is a fantastic helper!

Looking forward.

Looking aft.

Because of the hot summers, it was time to work on deck projects.  Thank God!

WEEKEND 14-20: Repair V-Hold and Small Deck Hole

Ok now the process of repairing the V-Hole. I used the same process as use to repair the Basket Ball Hole but with the help of my friend Bob we worked as a team on laying up the fiberglass.  Couldn't have done it without his help.

Here is the V-Hole at 8 AM

Originally I was trying to keep as much of the original structured fiberglass as possible but the lower section bowed out to much and made the executive decision to remove the entire section and repair it from the inside like the Basket Ball Hole repair.  Gregory who is looking in the hole actually later jumped out the hole from the inside.  Which I had a picture of that...

We brace the plywood wrapped in plastic against the hull to form the shape of the hull.  Especially important for such a large open hole area.

Then began the process of cutting the fiberglass cloth layers and wetting them out with resin and putting each one in place one after another until all 8 layers were in place. 

Here is what it looked like the next morning.  I was very pleased with the outcome. Only issue I had with the outcome was when I positioned the heavy wood brace against the plywood to shape the outside hull, I must have applied to much pressure at the top of the plywood which caused the top section of the repair to be indented about an inch.  It took more time to do fiberglass/fill and fairing work then it took to repair apply all the layers inside. But it all worked out.

To the right of the V-Hole there was a crack that had to be grinded and filled with 7 small layers of of fiberglass. This was only the outside repair.  Later I will have to do the same to the inside and then put several large sheets of fiberglass to reinforce the entire section to make this area rock solid! 

With the hull side holes partially completed, it was time to work on the deck. This was a pre-existing hole someone cut-out above the head in the aft section.  I can't figure out what this was done it had to be fiber-glassed & filled. 

And then the fill came the next day because of the rain...