Re: Tin addiction 18' Starcraft Chieftain
Cold in the teens and blustery outside so the only thing left to do is start in on the tedious work of cleaning up the tin I have stored in the garage for winter busy work. I planned on getting after the cabin but the cuddy's compartment bulkheads and supports were on top of it so I got started there. This is what I'm looking at with a nice rusty high water mark.
I disassembled all the smaller pieces and got to work on them first. I also patched up some cracked supports and angles in the bulkheads. The supports are a piece of channel that starcraft cut the sides off of leaving an extremely weak tab joint that cracked on 3 of the 4 ends. All 4 are getting repaired though. I drilled out the end of the crack and then cut pieces of scrap aluminum to size, back buttered with 5200 then riveted into place to beef up the flimsy tab.
The repaired cracked tab.
I made similar repairs with angle aluminum on a bulkhead with a 90 degree bend that had a crack.
I ended up with the day off inside the nice warm garage and a bit of forward work on the Chief. The smaller pieces got sanded, wire wheeled, cleaned up and primed with Rusto SE.
I almost forgot how bad corrosion smells when it becomes airborne, like moldy bluecheese stuffed inside an old gym sock.
Not too exciting work but hey like they say, it's progress!
