17 foot starcraft rebuild

[lith74]

Re: 17 foot starcraft rebuild

Front stringer during the dry fit.

 

[lith74]

Re: 17 foot starcraft rebuild

My initial plan changed, I was originally going to just cut off the tops of the stringer remove the wood and leave the fiberglass of the sides to use for added support. However once I saw how horrible the fiberglass work was I cut the sides out as well. I was really disappointed that none of the cross braces had fiberglass and the top half of the stringer where the cross brass attached had no fiberglass. Some areas had large pockets where the fiberglass was not laid correctly which allowed water to get into the stringers. This poor boats was doomed from the beginning.

 

[Woodonglass]

Re: 17 foot starcraft rebuild

For future reference of other iBoaters, it's never a good idea to use the existing stringer channels to insert new stringer wood into. Even if the mfg did a good job of glassing the original stringers. It will be almost impossible to clean and prep the interior of the channels well enough to get them to bond properly to the new wood stringers and this bond is critical for the structural integrity of the boat. It's always best to remove the channel as shown in the pics above and start with a clean slate.