Re: First boat Resto in progress " advice needed"
Hi, I am still hard at it, I have the cuddy gutted now. I now know why you guys said a sawzaw is a needed tool cause I didnt need it until I removed the stringers in the cuddy section, cant get a grinder in that angle hahaha so I sawed it out with the sawzaw as low as I could then used the grinder on the lower part and was still able to get one of them out in one piece so I could us it as a pattern, I got lucky on that part cause the other one was trashed. I have the new cuddy stringers cut out and are now absorbing the CPES I put on them tonight. I have most of all my rough grinding done in the whole boat just a little more to go and then I can clean up the mess I bet I had 10 gallons of fiberglass dust to throw away the last 2 weeks! One thing I have been wondering about pertains to the transom, which I have ready to go, I copied my old transom and one thing I noticed which is probably normal? is that the drain hole is acually even lower than the transom can go so about 1/4 of the hole is outside the transom wood, is this ok? I know I will put a thick layer of peanut butter under the transom before I set it in and make it solid down there with no voids. Will it be easy and ok to drill the hole through the transom and peanut butter? cause I know that stuff gets pretty hard and I dont want it to just crack out or somthing! I am alittle worried about this but I am assuming it is doable? Another thing I have been thinking about this week and I shouldnt even be thinking about it right now and shouldnt even bring it up, " Is the foam" What do you guys think about my hull design? Do you think I need the foam for hull support? I have thought about what Woodonglass said about the planking but that doesnt sound like that would work real well for a support issue just sinking. If it does not need to be there for support I would rather not use any foam at all!!!! Ok lets forget all about the "safety issue". It's kindove like this::::: When the boat was being used probably a few years before I quit using it for a rebuild I had noticed that the roller brakets on my trailer were bending outward, why? at the time I had no idea I figured it was cause of our bumpy country roads and the trailer might have not been big enough for the boat under those conditions. The brakets started chewing into the hull badly so I left the boat overnight at the marina and we bent the brackets back and reienforced them with thicker steel and they never bent again. Well when I dug all the foam out of the boat " ALL 2000lbs. OF IT" not kidding! That is what bent the brackets! I would think this thing would have sunk like a rock if it did get hull damage at that time. Note that I very rarely ever had the bildge run in that boat, I never saw water. I would stay overnight in it and it hardly ever ran. How did the water get in there I dont know, Let's just say that my new transom, stringers, and floor will never ever rot again I and sure hope they dont I spent alot of time and money on them already. My worst nightmare would be to have to cut up my nice floor with no problems and tear my boat all back apart just because there is about a ton of water filled foam in my boat! No way I could do it again. lets just look at it this way, People like Bondo's comments being a mod and having over 42,000 posts makes me think he might know somthin about that foam, If I do have a small hole or leak in my hull I dont want this happening all over again, so I would rather not use the foam unless my boat might bust in half or somthing hahaha it is a 23' what you guys think about this as far as support goes.
