Where can I get a long core drill to drill around a steel spike in a floor timber?

Easiest Way to make Large Wooden Dowels - YouTube

This guy made a dowel maker from a pipe. A variation of this could be made to drill down around those steel drifts. I agree the teeth need to be bent out a little or the friction against the wood on the pipe will be too high to finish the hole. A pipe like this also eats too much of the wood floor, IMO. Needs to be more the thickness of tubing, not piping.

I may also experiment with the hydraulic jacking idea of pulling out the drift.

 

If you need a long hole saw there is an easy way to make one. Buy a holesaw of the diameter you need. Then cut the top off and weld both pieces to a tube extension.

 

Actually a great idea because you could go carbide this way and hitting the steel a bit won't ruin your tool and you won't need to do all the teeth setting and hardening bs.

 

I can't say I have ever known this solution to work too well,the chance of the holesaw remaining circular isn't 100% and the weld will need to be ground down.Not such a big job on the outside of the tube but if the inside isn't dressed there is a big increase in friction as it reaches the core that has been left and things warm up.You almost certainly have to retract the saw and attempt to break out the core.A simple tube is less work and if the edge is lost it doesn't take long to restore it with a sawfile-assuming one possesses such an item.

I am wondering whether the problems with this particular boat may be linked to the galvanic bonding that is evident.We have no idea how many different metals are fizzing away with the boat afloat and perhaps more significant is the image in post #15 where it seems that a chink of daylight is visible above the scarf joint.At the very least I would be adding some support beneath the keel asap and maybe even trying to close the gap a bit.I rather fear that this boat is in the category of "the more you look,the more you find" with regard to structural issues.A good fix might be both expensive and time consuming but if the boat has dug into the owner's affections he may well see it through.

 

Agree with make a DIY core drill. I know I can weld or braze something together, Lean towards welding. Would be bad day to have the core drill break apart!

I had a great day yesterday, pulled out 3 drifts with a puller idea I had. Two drifts came out with no wood damage and those floors need no repairs. The drifts started moving with about 1000 pounds of force, the third one would not move and the come along began to collapse. I used a sawzall and a long blade and cut 2 grooves along the drift, slammed a chisel down to expose the drift and free it from the oak floor, then it pulled out fine. I have gotten rid of 5 drifts so far. At most would want to remove 3 more. The drilled drift holes, OEM drilled thru floor and keel completely, those are not blind holes. I can tell by how deep into the keel they go. The skeg wood under the keel is in great shape. I used my very long home made spade bit (which is dulled so as not to cut wood), and cleaned out all the impacted rust, flushed and also used it like a piston up and down to clean out the rust till water ran clean. My other puller idea is use a floor jack with the chain attached to the big 1/4" angle iron I made with a slot that fits under the steel collar rove that fits onto the drift. I was surprised how well that steel collar rove held up to the pulling force, I thought it might pull off the drift.

The drifts that pulled the easiest are ones that the keel is constantly submerged or majorly wet which is an area where any water tends to collect, the hull has a lot of down slope from both aft and stern to this spot. And the drifts in the keel were almost completely or completely wasted away. So none of them so far are doing anything to contribute to the hull structure.

These 2 pulled out without cutting into the floor, which is great as neither floor had any damage. They fit well to keel and no black rot like the other 2 I have repaired.


Steel angle iron bracket I made with slot to fit under the clinch rove washer
T find space to slip it under, I cut and chiseled 1/4" of floor
I then put a chain across to attach com along hook
On the drift that refused to come out, this angle bracket slight bent at the slot. That was a lot of force to do that.
I double nutted since I had some extra bolt length, but really did not need to. The bolts are 1/2" grade 3 strength.



Shows the pulled drift. 2x6 wood I slotted to fit over the floor. At top of 2x6 wood, I cut a wider slot to fit two short 2x6 that sit side by side and a chain attaches to top hook of come along



The puller contraption self straightened as the shortest distance is straight up and down, no danger of collapse.
The limiting factor here is the come along and maybe the steel slotted bracket. There is enough room to use a floor jack. I could place more steel angle iron under a floor jack side frame and attach chain to the floor jack. That would give me 3 tons of pulling power. I may have to put support under the front floor jack wheels down to the keel to keep it from tilting up when doing that pull.
View attachment 173571

 

The hydraulic floor jack cant finish the job of pulling out a drift as the room between floor top and the sole support 2x4's is maybe 6 inches, but it could start them moving a lot. I noticed that once they moved, the pulling force lessened considerably. So then the come along or my 3 foot pry bar could finish the pull out. Or could put jack on the x4 floor supports. You really want to pull against the floor, not from the keel. That keeps the pressure where it needs to be. You dont want to lift the keel away from the floor and break the planking screws or the rib framing, etc...

Here is right before the pull, you can see the 2x6 are locked into the floor by the slot cut in the wood. Wood like this in compression is very strong. I have also thought about getting a new come-along rated for 4 tons, 8000 pounds of pull force.

 

That is an old 2005 picture showing the bottom and the gaps in the large skeg wood is right before boat goes back into the water. Back in 2005, boat say on the hard for over a year while I worked on reframing. So the wood is very dry here. All these gaps go away when it takes up some water. Then in 2014, I had to repair some worn damage in the aft tallest part of the skeg. I had to cut out a section and glue in some oak. I found out the skeg is bronzed bolted together and those bronze bolts are separate from the keel to skeg bronze bolts. The only iron fastening the OEM did was the floor to drift bolts. It seems the skeg was constructed independent from keel as an assembly, then bolted to the keel. I think the planks were the last thing to go on after the framing was done.

Here is from 2014, I coated hull with Black PL roof and flashing, which is similar to Sikaflex 291 and showing the repair.





I cut a stairstep pattern into the skeg, best strongest way to fix, plus was going after the worm holes which were 3/8 or bigger in diameter



I ended up hand sawing as the keel was too thick for circular saw to finish, plus saved the bolt. To keep the bronze bolt, the new skeg wood I cut down the middle so goes around the bolt. Bolt cannot come out as top is nutted at the top of skeg which is bolted to keel.




and here is a vid of me moving bolt inside the skeg.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/rHwrErg1DXo821Bd8

New oak wood fitted into skeg that goes around the bronze bolt. Screwed with bronze screws and glued with PL mixed with sawdust. Skeg was white oak, repair made with red oak. You can see the color difference too.


two pieces glued and screwed







There is no worm shoe yet here, this is all skeg

 

The hull shape reminds me of a fish belly!, here you can see how water on the inside will flow to the forward deepest bilge and sit, which is where the bad rusted drifts are. None of the other wood floors show any damage that I can see, no slumping puddles of rust where floor meets keel...
But 52 years and steel and water and wood. But they could have used bronze or something else like treenails, I have seen house decks where the iron deck screws caused serious decay to the treated pine wood in just a decade. For my house deck, I used SS square drive deck screws and in 20 years, no rust and no damage to the decking. Deck gets constant rain exposure, it is not covered, but does have some shade.

That is a big skeg, most people will think it is keel, while technically the keel is above this skeg and bolted to it. Such a large timber frame construction adds a lot of strength to this boat. Boats weighs about 20,000 pounds. I have seen some lousy built wood boats where when the boat sits on the hard, the keel is tiny and actually is distorted from the weight. Even this boat, the OEM builders made plenty of goofy design decisions, which I hate. They certainly did not build it to last long enough to come down to me without needing serious repairs. They could have done much better, for not a lot more money.

 

I did buy a 5/8 hole saw, this one here. I have arbor that will fit.
LENOX Tools Bi-Metal Speed Slot Hole Saw with T3 Technology, 5/8" - Hole Saw Arbors - Amazon.com

the idea would be to cut the threaded base off, and weld in steel tubing to the cutter head. Then weld or braze the base onto the tubing.
Any inner weld getting in the way can be ground off using a carbide Cutter in a Dremel.
But before I did that, I would try my hydraulic floor jack idea. I like the idea of not enlarging the existing hole even if it is only 1/8 inch larger.

I also saw you buy solid fiberglass rod, such as from Mc Master Car. Which I think could work glued in. I am still more interested in something like IPE or Black locust.
The wooden boat forum, a guy suggested using galvanized threaded rod glued in with epoxy, but then your back to iron. Epoxy is great but I wonder if the water will still cause rusting another 50 years from now. It could also be that my old 1970 Eggharbor 37 extended salon will be a very rare gem, one of the few surviving boats of that time. I could realistically keep up the work on this boat for another 20 years at which time I will be 82! Maybe then I will be able to give it to someone who still likes wooden boats.

Old wooden boats are infinitely repairable, they never have to go to a landfill, but few will take them on. Too big is too much wood boat, mine is about the right size for what we use it for.

 

Congratulations. What's the next move, treenails or bronze?

 

Not bronze, no metal, just the wood dowels. I found something I had that is extremely hard and dense and dark black red in color, but I dont think its a mahogany, very fine straight grain and heavy. It has been out in the weather for years, and nothing happened to it. I really dont recall where it came from, but may have been an old bench slat from a garden bench we had in the 1980's. I also have teak, after I took off the rear covering boards. And somewhere have a set of teak hatches from an old crushed boat. But really dont think teak is the best choice. I priced an IPE deck board, 5/8 x 6 at Yukon lumber in Norfolk VA, and it is 7$ per running foot, they dont even have any black locust, no cumaru. the prices on hardwood are really high now. Exotic wood seems to be run by a cartel cabal, not easily available. Yukon is down to their last board of IPE! Has the US government been coming down on tropical wood importers?

He told me he can get a couple of other tropical hardwoods, Garapa and Massaranduba but they dont stock them, prices are even higher than for IPE.

Black locust seems to be hard to get, there is a website dedicated to the wood, and you have to have it shipped, and they wont tell you the price, have to get a quote. Seems like that kind of business is looking for big buyers, and I just need a little. Somewhere I do have some leftover cumaru from my wormshoe replacement.

Parents and brother used to live in Blacksburg, VA, (really Christiansburg) and locust wood was everywhere growing. A common small tree. They had over 30 acres, horses, nice place off Magnolia Lane.

 

This is the only part of the white oak keel that experienced some iron sickness damage to the wood. It is just forward of the lowest spot in the bilge. You can see the iron blackened wood. This part of the keel is less wet, no standing water. It seems wood underwater has no iron sickness. This floor was the one I had to slot the side to pull the drift, and the drift was completely gone in the keel. A lot of iron dissolved into the oak and ate up a small bit of it.

I used a 3/8 drill pit to explore the defect, and it is not too bad, sides are solid and dug down till it hit hard wood in the base. This area is too wet to reliably glue, but I gave it a go. Dried it some with a heat gun. Then cut a small piece of wood to fit, and glued it in place with some PL and sawdust mix. Laid a cereal bag on top , then a board and lead weights. Idea really is to fill the hole to keep out dirt etc... And the skeg under this is at least a 7 inches tall and about 4 inches wide. An advantage of PL polyurethane adhesive, is it expands, this glue will swell and fill all the little spaces in the wood, so simple friction and the swelling will seal this up keeping the oddball plug-patch in place. It is the unrusted iron rusting chemical reaction with wood creating acids that damages wood. the rust itself does nothing as it is already reacted with water.

I cut off the damaged floor base and will glue in a piece of PT SYP wood. The floor here is really very small and whole thing could be replaced, but dont want to disturb the screws holding the frames to the floor since boat is in the slip. The bronze bolts made it very hard to cut off the bottom of this floor. I ended up using a chisel and a rasp. The wood is clean and dry on the bottom for gluing, not black.

Good example of how steel and wood and water are not good together. I also think oxalic acid could take out some of the black iron staining.
Bronze bolts from keel to skeg are about 12" apart in this forward section, then they get a wider spacing, then go tighter spacing under the engines. Then back aft wider like about 16" spacing. There are a lot of bronze bolts in the keel and skeg holding everything together.

Why did they have to cheap out and use steel drifts, when they used so many bronze bolts. It must be like tradition, that is the way of things, but see this can be a bad thing.

I wont be able to do anymore work for a couple of weeks.

 

Try firewood places for black locust, and don't forget to experiment with the wedge lenght for the blind wedges.

 

Is it possible to weld in say a 3/4 inch nut to the end of the spike, use the nuts thread to attach either your come along or a jack, then put a wrench on the welded on nut when under load and twist the nut back and forth until things give?

 

Clearly a man with a strong attachment to his boat and I expect that if a boat could talk it would thank you for all the work.If truly durable hardwoods are hard to find then bronze ought to to be next on the list,after all the bronze already in the boat has lasted quite a long time.