GRP boat buider needing wooden advice!

[Matt Lingley]

Ok, so it looks like I might have a wooden Dragon to play with as a winter project, but I've never really worked on a wooden boat before. Not couting plywood and reading classic boat and wooden boat mags. I can talk a good talk but dont really know what i'm doing!

Problems with the boat I have spotted so far;
Starboard garboard strake (the bottom plank just above the keel right?) Rotten where some prat put a stainless bung into a bronze fitting. Somone else compounded the problem by skimming some filler over it when the wood started to go soft so we have a plank that is rotten for about a foot in the middle, so I assume replace? its also rotted a semi circle of the plank above it also, is there a way of repairing that or should I replace that too? mahogany planking I think.

Soft/broken frame, port side. I want to replace it, I know you can sister frames, but I'm hoping i can race her again so I want add stiffness where i can. How do you go about it? Thinking of laminating up a new frame (steaming sounds like alot of hassel), but how do i swap the frames without changing the shape of the boat?

Open seams.....I can see light from the inside! Thats scary to me! I've been told its perfectly normal, the boats been away from the water at least a year or two, and she should take up, but how do i get a decent paint job done with open seams everywhere? Do i dare put more putty in, or will that strain things? Throw her in the water, let her take up then pull her out, scrape off all the old paint, fair and re-paint before she opens up again?!

Oh, and could do with re-decking. But thats just 15mm plywood. Can handle that.

Sorry about the long post, I've fallen in love with this boat. Fed up of working on and sailing on white gelcoat all the time...

[Gilbert]

If you have a board that will make a whole new garboard it is probably as fast to replace the whole plank as it is to monkey around making a short plank with butt blocks or scarfing a relatively short plank in to replace the rotten portion. However there is nothing wrong with having a short plank here and there. It should probably span 4 or 5 frame spaces though at least. You can replace a portion of the other plank too, but you don't want the butts to be less than say three frames away from the butt joint in the adjacent plank.
The boat won't lose it's shape if you are only removing one frame. Laminating a frame should be fine.
If the planks are quite dry you do not want to drive the cotton in as hard as you would normally, but it should be tight enough so that it doesn't just pull out easily. If you caulk it carefully you shouldn't need to soak things up first. This is assuming the seams are not so wide that they can't be caulked without the cotton going clear through. After the cotton is in, paint the seam with a primer and when it dries apply the seam compound. I normally drag a quarter inch diameter rivet shank down the seam compound I have just applied to remove some of it. That way when the planks swell the compound has some room to squeeze up with out standing proud of the seam (hopefully). After applying the compound and it has skinned over the seam should be primed again.

[Gilbert]

Perhaps I should have mentioned that it may not be necessary to recaulk the boat. As you infer in your post it is possible that it could soak up and become tight just as it is. And I would say you should delay the repainting until it has been in the water some time so as not to dry out to quickly when you do repaint.

[Matt Lingley]

Just an update, she is (more or less) done.

7 frames, deck, rudder, cuddy top and section of garboard new... Moden rig and fittings bought second hand. Re-stopped every seam, roughtly faired and quickly painted (will get a total re-fair and re-paint over the winter, after she's had a chance to move about and settle down.)

Going sailing tommorrow, at last!