1969 Sea Ray SRX Pachanga Build Thread

[Propellerhead]

Well, it's been a year and a half, so I thought I'd write an update. First of all, I need to admit that I cheated. I was making great progress, and then it all halted. I think that I burned myself out, especially on all that fiberglass work. I was really dreading going in and finishing it all, plus in that time, i got a new job, moved twice, and life just got in the way. I needed a way to get my motivation back, so I farmed out the remainder of the fiberglass on the stringers and engine compartment. There's a fiberglass boat repair shop that's literally a half a block from the hangar. I admit defeat! But you know, it definitely worked to get me motivated again, so I guess I shouldn't feel to bad, right? Here's how it turned out:




It's great to see it in the light of day again.




All the holes from various fittings and the windshield fairing have been repaired and filled.





The exterior transom has been repaired and filled.

 

[Propellerhead]

The stringers are completely encased and chopped in.





The engine compartment is also completely fiberglassed.





While the boat was at the shop, I took the time to use the old rear bench seat base as a pattern to make a new one. I cut all the wood, but I haven't assembled it yet because I'm going to waterproof all the pieces with fiberglass resin before I screw it all together.

 

[Propellerhead]

Now that I have the boat back, it's time to start working on the floor. If you recall, I already cut the floor pieces, and fiberglassed the underside.



I put the two floor sections in to see how they fit, and the fit was ok. It wasn't perfect because in the year and a half that the boat had sat with the stringers halfway done, the wood had moved around a little. I don't think it's going to be anything that requires making new pieces, but word to the wise, when you start, you should try to finish. Haha.

I also drew centerlines on the floor where the stringers were, and drilled countersinks for the screws.





I had some help from a friend at this point. We took the floor sections back out and started drilling 3 inch (I think) holes in between the stringer centerlines at 2-foot intervals to give us access to pour in the flotation foam. The reason I taped the floor where we were going to drill is so if I spilled some of the foam, it wouldn't make a big mess, I could just peel it up with the tape.




I also drilled the floor in the engine compartment for the same reason. Ah! My new fiberglass! Oops. I could have done this before I sent it off to be fiberglassed, but oh well. Not the end of the world to do it after.




Once the floor was drilled and ready to be installed, I ran a huge bead (as in I used the entire tube) of Locktite PL glue on the top of the stringers to bond them and make them water tight with the the floor.

 

[Propellerhead]

We put the floor pieces back in for the last time! I screwed them down with stainless screws dipped in 3M 5200 bedding compound so that the screw holes would be watertight.

Now that the floor was down it was time to foam the empty spaces.




We set up a mixing station on the stern. I'm using regular closed-cell A/B flotation foam mixed at a 50/50 ratio. This is stuff expands like crazy, so we took it slow and mixed less than we thought we needed, which was a good thing, because just 4 oz of each (as pictured) was enough to fill the smaller spaces in the engine compartment.




Shea looks so thrilled to be the mixer while I'm pouring it into the holes.

 

[Propellerhead]

As a side note, I had heard that the coast guard no longer requires flotation foam in case the boat gets swamped. I'm always ok with skipping work that I don't have to do, but I looked up the rules just in case, and that's not entirely true. They still require foam in boats that are under 20 feet in length. Oh well, it's probably good to have. I think that I waterproofed the stringers and floor well enough that hopefully I won't get any rot for a long time.




On basically every hole, once the foam got the the top, I had to weigh the plug down with something so the foam wouldn't push it right back out. (I just used the hole scraps that the hole saw created to plug the holes again, being careful of course to put them back in with the fiberglass side down.)


http://vid693.photobucket.com/album...anga/04149E21-3E4B-4DAE-A879-D41D9CFE5E20.mp4

This is a link to a video of the foam expanding to fill the empty spaces.




Here's the floor freshly foamed. You can see that some of it squeezed up through the gap around the outside. This probably could have been avoided by fiberglassing the floor in first, but I only wanted to lay the fiberglass once. I didn't want to have to go back and re-glass all the access holes. This may be right or wrong, but it's what I did.

 

[Propellerhead]

It's a new day. After the foam had set, I removed all the tape (which did it's job perfectly) and I also removed the excess that had spilled up through the gaps. Also, some of the plugs weren't sitting completely level with the floor, so I sanded them down until it was level again. There were a couple that definitely pushed up even though they had weight on them.




I also used a flap-disc grinder to rough up the fiberglass around the holes in the engine compartment to prep them for the fiberglass repair.

 

[Propellerhead]

Alright, another new day. This time I had help from Forrest. We decided to divide an conquer. Forrest took up cutting the fiberglass mat for the edges of the floor.




He also trimmed the mat that I had cut earlier to fit the floor exactly.





I made the kick panel that fills the space between the floor and the storage shelf in the bow. I also cut fiberglass mat for each side.

 

[Propellerhead]

Gettin' ready to lay some 'glass.




I decided to use my kick panel as a test for the resin because it's pretty hot outside, plus this resin is a year and a half old, and I want to make sure it's not expired. It's a good thing that we did that, because it turns out that the rest of my resin did actually go bad. This panel never cured. We even took a dinner break and came back and it was still completely gooey. So this a wrench in the works. It pretty much means that we can't finish the floor until I can get some more resin.

Ok, well it's better that we discovered it now rather than pour it all over that nice new floor. So we decided to switch gears. The day is not lost. One of the problems with this boat is that somebody removed a bunch of the structure under the bow, so when you step on it, you can feel it give. I definitely don't want this, especially with all that filler up there from the old windshield fairing, so I'm going to put the structure back in. I also have to make a new kick panel.




Truth be told, I actually wasn't totally satisfied with the fit of the pick panel anyway. I cut it based on measurements, but the side of the boat are contoured, and the straight edges of the panel left some big-ish gaps. So this time I used a contour gauge and got the exact shape of the hull to transfer to the new piece.




Once you lay the gauge on to the new piece of wood you can draw the curve.





It still took a little fitting, but this one fits with very little gap to fill later.

 

[Propellerhead]

By the way, if you look at that last picture, you can see what a previous owner had done to try to restore some structure to the bow. They literally just wedged a piece of wood up under the bow to hold it up. That's part of the carpet that it's sitting on. I think we can to better than that. My plan is to install three structural "beams" for lack of a better word, in a "T" shape. Two pieces of wood will go side-to side behind the dash to tie into the current structure that runs along the sides of the boat. The third piece will "T" off of those and run up the middle of the bow. That is definitlely more than this boat came with from the factory, but to make it even better, a lot of the empty space in the bow is going to be taken up by a giant stereo subwoofer box, so I'm going to attach that to both the floor and the new structural pieces up top. The structural pieces will be fiberglassed in, but the speaker box will be removable, of course.




Forrest set to work removing the old carpet from the speaker box, and sanding the wood to prep it for fiberglass resin water-proofing.






I made the new pieces from 2x6. I used a piece of thin, straight wood to bend slightly (after some careful measurements) to replicate the arch of the bow, and I think I got a pretty good fit.

Well that's it for this week of work. Hopefully I got this project back on track. You'll hear from me again when I can get a hold of some more resin.

 

[archbuilder]

Good think you checked the resin, I almost choked on my coffee when you said how old it was! Looks like you are making some good progress! I left my toe board out, I meant to put it in later.....but I kind of like not having it. By the way you can also cut cardboard shipping tubes in half and glass them to the back side of the bow. I did a center support like you are doing, and tubes 90 degrees to it, Its amazing how stiff it is.

 

[Scott Danforth]

Looking good

 

[Propellerhead]

Good think you checked the resin, I almost choked on my coffee when you said how old it was! Looks like you are making some good progress! I left my toe board out, I meant to put it in later.....but I kind of like not having it. By the way you can also cut cardboard shipping tubes in half and glass them to the back side of the bow. I did a center support like you are doing, and tubes 90 degrees to it, Its amazing how stiff it is.

Right on!

 

[Natesms]

Glad to see you picked it back up. The structure looks really good and I completely understand raising the white flag on the fiberglass work!

 

[Propellerhead]

Thank you! It's been a couple months, and I've been crazy busy, but I finally got some more resin and got going again. By the way, if anyone is looking in the Salt Lake area for supplies, I've had a great experience with 3D Art in Kearns. I picked up 5 gallons of poly resin with catalyst and a 3 lb box of cotton milled filler for $120 and no shipping!

Ok, I kind of worked on a couple different things, but basically, I'm trying the get as much of the fiberglass done as I can before the weather gets cold. The two big areas are finishing up the floor, and the interior side panels and seats. Obviously the floor is the priority, but I did spend some time to finish up fabricating and fine-tuning the side panels.

When I had left the side panels, they were mostly done, but I needed to finish up cutting all the holes for the speakers, controls, and other equipment. This is what I ended up with. 3/4 ply might be a little overkill, but they're going to be supporting things like the throttle and stereo head unit, so I wanted to make sure they were sturdy.

I test fit the foreword starboard panel because the head unit goes pretty deep, and I still have an inch or two of space. Score! My measurements worked.

Next I wanted to build some speaker boxes for the mid range speakers that are going in these panels. I looked up the recommended volume from Rockford Fosgate for these speakers and it was 0.15 cubic feet. I tried my best to remember my high school math, and after subtracting the volume of the circles in the plywood side panels, and planning on the boxes being 7 inches square (for 6 inch speakers) came up with a depth of 4 3/4 inches.

I cut all the pieces for 4 boxes.

I kind of used this handy corner clamp to countersink and screw the parts together, but honestly it turned out to be more trouble than it was worth, so for the most part is just used old fashioned wood clamps. As a side note, I am aware that screwing into the end grain of plywood is not the most sound way to do it, but I am going to be fiberglassing the whole thing, so the screws are mostly to hold it in place until that happens.

 

[Woodonglass]

Cotton Milled Fiber?? What will you be using that for?? It is NOT used with Polyester Resin, ONLY epoxy, and it is NOT used for Boats!!!!:faint2:

 

[Propellerhead]

Any particular reason why? I have two reliable sources telling me that it's fine... and it's in there now, so it's not changing.

 

[Propellerhead]

Ok, I guess not. I had thought that I did ample research, but after that last post, I did even more research, and couldn't come up with any reason why using these materials is a bad idea. And like I said, what's done is done, so short of redoing a year and a half of work, it's in there for good. Besides, I'm pretty damn sure that it's going to be just fine.

That being said, if there is work that I have to re-do, I'm not opposed to doing it. And I had to do that with the speaker boxes. I thought that I had enough room behind the interior panels for the speaker boxes that I was building, but it turns out that there isn't enough room behind the front panels, because that's where the hull starts to get narrower toward the bow. Measure twice, cut once. So in order to make the boxes shallower and still keep the same interior volume, I had to make them wider. So, I redid my math and figured out a box that would work with some new shallower measurements. The rears fit just fine with plenty of room, which is good, because the panels are a lot smaller, so there wouldn't be be room to make the boxes wider back there.

Here are the new and improved pieces.

And the assembled boxes. Shallow fronts up top, and deep rears on bottom.

I laid some wax paper over the saw horses and work bench, and started coating parts with resin. These were the pieces for the rear bench seat base, and the speaker boxes, which I also reinforced with 1708 mat in the corners. In order to make some more room to work, I put a tarp in my truck bed and let some of the pieces cure outside.

 

[Propellerhead]

With those parts curing, it was time to get cracking on the floor.

I did one last clean up. Vacuum, pick up the pieces of fiberglass mat we cut, and if you noticed, Forrest and I signed our work.

I set up a mixing station on the stern so I didn't have to keep climbing in and out of the boat.

I started mixing the peanut butter and making the fillets on the sides of the floor.

I did a wet on wet layup, and laid a layer of 1708 over the fillets.

As I was working, the filler that I mixed up for the plugs in the floor went off sooner than I thought. I really didn't want to stop everything and grind fiberglass and make a big mess so I could make them smooth enough to lay mat over, so while they were still a little soft, I shaved off the excess with a chisel, and it worked wonders. Nice and smooth.

 

[jbcurt00]

From the 1st hit @ google:

Also referred to as milled cotton fibers, cotton flock is used as a filler to thicken epoxy resins or to promote adhesion between laminate layers. It offers dimensional stability and enhance compound strength. It is also used for patching and repairing surfaces, although it is not recommended for boat hull repairs. This filler is best suited in areas that will not be submerged or in constant contact with water.

Just like some will use talc, wood flour or regular flour to thicken resins and would use bondo as filler, most here (WOG and myself included) try to recommend products that aren't going to absorb water, ever, if it's exposed to it since it's a boat, and there are similar priced options that won't. Plus try to recommend that people avoid products that are specifically used w/ 1 resin (like epoxy) when working w the other (polyester). Not unlike suggesting it's not necessary to use CSM w/ epoxy in layups since there's no styrene to react w/ the binders in CSM. Can it be used? Yep, but there has been some discussion about whether it just adds bulk and consumes extra epoxy resin w/ little to no added strength. Some use it anyway, others don't.

You aren't using it on the exterior of the hull, and I'd hope you keep it covered, dry and generally well maintained after all this work, so you should be fine.

Not sure how often it happens, but occasionally, when someone says resin, they are talking about 1 type, and the other party is thinking they mean the other. I see from your stern mix station you are using polyester resin. There's a bottle of MEKP sitting on the table. This is the only time I've ever heard someone use cotton milled fibers for their boat rehab, poly or epoxy build.

None of that is to suggest you need to demo and start over. You've gotten advice elsewhere (might make sure they know you're working on a boat and using polyester) and are confident in your build and methods. Proceed as you see fit.

But you did ask, and all that ^^^ is why.

I'm guessing you are just pre-wetting the wood you've got coated in resin, in prep for re-wetting w/ additional polyester before applying the CSM. Looks like a bunch of it is just wetted out, but no CSM:

 

[Propellerhead]

Thank you! Ok, that makes sense. I'm glad you had some informed input on it. I'm sure it'll be fine. To answer your question, those pieces are for some bolt-in interior parts, and I'm coating them with resin for water-proofing only, no fabric. The exception is the speaker boxes which are getting a layer of csm.