Transom & Stringer replacement

[blaze_125]

the original(what I removed) was 3 strips 1 layer of woven roving and 3 cross members scattered across the top of the stringers.

So 3 places had a 4" wide strip of woven roving, and 3 other places had a bare cross member.

I'm making this 2 layers of 6oz mat, end to end.
And 4 or 5 cross member. The cross members will be attached as follow:
Predrilled screw holes
screw holes filled with epoxy
end grain of the opening epoxied
and tied down with stainless screws.

[blaze_125]

This post is for PAR... I saw your response on another thread and I didn't want to take ownership of a thread that wasn't mine so I'll bring the quote in here.

Originally Posted by PAR

Actually the deck is the part the bow light and cleats sit on. The places you walk around inside the boat are called the sole.

The easiest way to remove the foam is with a flexible hand saw, amazingly enough. Power tools will quickly show you how easy it is to cut through the hull. A hand saw can bend around the hull shapes and stringers. Remove big chunks at a time, but don't get greedy, just what you can handle. I use a regular cross cut and a key hole style drywall saw for the tight curves.

You can try to pry up the tabbing on your stringers, but it's a lot more effort then just cutting the top off and whacking out the old stringer, leaving the tabbing intact for the most part, to receive a new stringer.

The sole is just as important as the stringers. It provides the bulk of athwartship stiffness, the stringers bear longitudinal loads.

You could try solvents to remove the foam, but then you have a pool of molten foam goo you have to deal with, which of course is going to be quite toxic. Hack it out as best as you can, then clean up the hull shell with a grinder or sander.

You can place more foam in the bilge. I wouldn't bother, but if you elect to do so, use the 2 pound density, two part polyurethane stuff. Don't pour this stuff into a closed compartment, unless you want to see it rip apart from expanding foam. It serves to satisfy politicians, but little else. The buoyancy it provides, can be had from the same spaces below the sole, filled just with air (no foam) and if it's not there, it can't absorb moisture, fuel, etc.

There are many previous threads on these subjects. It may be a wise investment to plod through the old back threads and get an idea what you're up against, the tools, techniques and materials.

Good Luck and welcome aboard Mark . . .

My question is in regards to the section I made bold.
Do you mean once we removed the foam and put in a new deck we shouldn't bother pourring in new foam under the deck?

[blaze_125]

and then there were 2...

[PAR]

That's correct, I wouldn't bother re-installing foam in the bilge. The compartments will be sealed in, once the new sole goes down, so they serve as air chambers, which does the same thing as air chambers filled with foam do. The benefit other then the obvious not needing to buy and install foam is, these compartments can be drained back to a sump (weep holes) or transom drain, so any accumulated moisture can drain out. Foam will just suck some up, eventually getting soaked and staring the problem all over again.

[blaze_125]

Originally Posted by PAR

That's correct, I wouldn't bother re-installing foam in the bilge. The compartments will be sealed in, once the new sole goes down, so they serve as air chambers, which does the same thing as air chambers filled with foam do. The benefit other then the obvious not needing to buy and install foam is, these compartments can be drained back to a sump (weep holes) or transom drain, so any accumulated moisture can drain out. Foam will just suck some up, eventually getting soaked and staring the problem all over again.

Nice. That's 100$ I can spend somewhere else now.

Originally Posted by blaze_125

and then there were 2...

I used a cut brush to glass that second stringer. It shaved 1 and a half hour, and I also cut down on the quantity of resin I used.
With the stir stick, I used about 25 pump shot of resin(I'm talking about the pump system for the WestSystem epoxy). With the brush, I used about 18.

Both stringers were epoxied to the hull using a "peanut butter" mixture of epoxy and fillers. The stringers were pressed down into the epoxy using bricks for about 3 hours(I'm using the "quick" cure hardener).

Tonight I'm going to do the middle stringer and I'll start epoxying the crossmembers. I should be able to dry fit the floor panel saturday or sunday. Then I'll glass the outside of the transom to make it all pretty again. How long should I wait before I take her to the water? Once the outside skin of the transom is glassed I'd like to take the boat to the lake, and let the boat sit in the water for about 30 minutes(to watch for leaks), then I'd go for a quick drive to ensure the transom holds up.

[blaze_125]

Originally Posted by PAR

That's correct, I wouldn't bother re-installing foam in the bilge. The compartments will be sealed in, once the new sole goes down, so they serve as air chambers, which does the same thing as air chambers filled with foam do.

The way the boat is made, those "chambers" are not sealed in any way. The front and rear are wide open. Does that mean I should close the ends under the deck?

If you look at the image below


The green part represents the deck/sole
The redish portion represent the open area at the front. So basically... if I dropped a marble behind the foot rest, it would freely roll all the way to the back of the boat under the sole.

[PAR]

Even better, you don't need weep holes, as all the moisture will easily travel the length of the bilge and can drain out. Of course you need to provide a drain. At the aft end of the bilge stringers, you may need a weep hole to let moisture out from there, if they butt against the transom.

Under the splash well, you can stop the sole short and create a "sump". This sump would have a drain for the bilge area and moisture on the sole would just dump into this depression. The transom would also have a drain, which you'd plug underway, the bilge drain wouldn't need to be plugged. If your boat takes a fair amount of water over the rails, then a pump mounted in the sump is a good idea. By the biggest, bad ass pump you can fit in the sump.

[blaze_125]

here's a little something to look at until I go get some more mat.

On this one... don't mind the dry mat at the top right. My measuring skills were a little off lol




Test fitting the cross members

[blaze_125]

Originally Posted by David Valle

Hey do you have a full pic of the boat ?

a few days before I baught it last year.

[blaze_125]

Latest update...
A bunch of crap keep pushing back my dead line but I'm getting there. I was hoping I could get her wet tonight, but that's going to have to wait a little longer. Anyway... yesterday I was planning puting the transom outter sking back on the boat, but once I got back there I decided to do the splash well instead. When I removed the rotten transom, I cut out a portion of the splash well to make my life easier.

So the splashwell is glassed, tonight the transom outerskin is going on and the misc hardware will be installed(drain plug, tow hooks,...).

[David Valle]

Thanks for all the pics.

Looks to me like some solid work your doing.

[blaze_125]

Originally Posted by David Valle

Thanks for all the pics.

Looks to me like some solid work your doing.

I'm trying very hard to make it as neat as possible. I don't want anything failing on me in the middle of a lack with possibly nobody around to save my @ss. And if this thread can help someone else in the same situation I was a few months ago, then it's a bonus

[blaze_125]

tonights' work:


I put the rear outer skin back on.
I used thickened epoxy to glue it back on the transom, and screws to make sure it would stay there during the curing process. While it was curing, I went ahead and started sanding the joint all around the piece. There is only 1 small area where the laminated piece doesn't sit exacly flush with the remaining of the outer skin, so I'll just sand it down a little more than the rest to ensure I don't end up with a fugly bump that comes out of nowhere...

Tomorrow I'll be able to remove the screws and sand the areas where the screws were located. Once that's done, I'll start laying some fiberglass. I'll probably end up sanding the whole rear end though. I'll take all of the gel coat off and fiberglass the whole back end since I used screws to laminate the transom to the outer skin, and some more screws to laminate the outer skin that was cut off to clean out the rotten transom. If I don't glass over the screw hole I'll end up doing this all over again in 3 years if not sooner.

Having very little experience in this kind of work, I think most of the timelines I had set were probably way off for my skillset. I mean, I'm no retard but this is a little more time consuming than I expected so I'll try to stay away from set timeline from now on lol

[PAR]

Attached is the proper way to handle those seams. The left hand image shows it as it is now, two skins glued back down on the transom. The middle shows what we mean when you feather out the edges. I use a big disk grinder or sander for this and plow out a wide groove, about 1/2 to 2/3's of the way through the laminate at the seam, but tapering to flush several inches away. The right hand image shows the ground out hollow area filled. Lay in fabric and thickened epoxy. If you can figure out a way to mash a piece of stiff plastic or coated plywood to the transom, it'll make fairing a lot easier.

In other words, don't just fill the seams and call it good, because they'll come right back as cracks.

[blaze_125]

Originally Posted by PAR

If you can figure out a way to mash a piece of stiff plastic or coated plywood to the transom, it'll make fairing a lot easier.

I don't understand what you mean?