Sail folding 101...

Not much to write here. The kid and I took advantage of a nice sunny day in June to learn to inspect, clean and fold the sails. Basically, it was just an excuse to be outside on a nice day.





Super cute Mommy (Mammi) looking on.

Mast cont....

Not much new to report here... I have the sail track off, all the pieces are epoxied back together and its just about ready for "the big box glue up". I still want to get a couple of long strips of carbon fiber tape on the inside of the mast and I haven't been able to find it at an affordable price yet. The carbon fiber was a great suggestion to stiffen up the mast. After that, I'll be ready to wire the mast, fill the top of it with crumpled and strips of "tin"foil (another great suggestion from friends, family and the Woodenboat Forum) and then I'll finally put the box back together.

Until then it waits...

Mast started...

Finally started on the mast this weekend!

When I had the boat and mast delivered here last January, the mast (because it was left outside for years) literally fell apart when it was picked up. The only thing holding it together was the hardware. There were plenty of jokes about scrapping it and using the wood from the old mast to make new fly rods for fishing. Well, a year later it's finally on its way back from the dead.


The construction is simple enough. It's essentially a long oval box with the Port and Strbd sides wider than the leading and the aft sides. All four pieces are each made up of two staves scarfed together. The scarfs are staggered so that no two joints line up. Once all the pieces are together, the inside is a hollow with the exception of a piece of blocking at the foot of the mast and another in the center where the spreaders are. The blocking is just a piece of wood to create more rigidity in an are in which needs more support than the rest. The blocking in the middle was the only place in which there was any rot, so this will be the only piece that will need to be re-made. But not today.



Basically all we did today was a lot of talking and planning. We eventually decided on a plan to put it all together again by joining the Port and Strbd pieces first, then to do the same to the forward and aft piece. (The aft piece also holds the sail track. The sail track unfortunately goes right over the scarf to be re joined, so the whole track will need to come off before doing that one. ) Today we sanded and cleaned the scarf joints, applied just West System on both sides, then mixed up a batch of West with filler added. We made sure the edges were straight and clamped everything down for the night. This is what it looks like night now.














I hope to get all the scarfs "glued" back together in the next couple of days, then build/replace the piece of blocking that rotted, next get the wiring squared away and then when I'm ready to put the box back together I'll have to get a bunch of friends together to help out.




It's winter in NH so people are a little "boat starved" and willing to do just about anything to be around boats, they'll even drink beer while watching epoxy dry...

Boom...

For years the boom has been stored in a barn up in Maine and now its finally back in the company of the boat. It's a 12 foot spruce stick with a roller furling system. Looks like someone beat it up a little trying to remove the varnish but all in all, it looks like it's in great shape and just needs a little cosmetic work. I'll strip, sand and varnish the wood and although it seems to work just fine, I'll probably disassemble, clean and grease the gearbox.

Chainplates out...

Lately, the weather in NH has made it hard to get out in the boat and get any real work done.

It's warm and sunny one day, all the birds are singing and I'm looking for the flip flops again... then its 30 degrees, sleeting, I'm wearing big Sorrel boots and snow blowing the old lady's driveway next door. Just when I expected to be pulling the blue tarp back to work on the topsides and outside of the cabin house, I find myself driving to Stef's (Ace) Hardware to buy a new thick black tarp to cover up for the latest round of unseasonably lousy weather. I have been able to get out a few times since last week and the insides of the cabin house really look great. The water stains and discoloration from years of exposure are gone, or at least they were a few days ago... we'll see what has snuck in during the last storm. The cross members supporting the ceiling/deck also look good again and are almost 100% free of old paint and finishes. If I can get them really clean, I'm hoping to finish them bright. The really big news if that all six chainplates are finally out! They look pretty good for thier age but should be tossed. I've priced out their replacments which suprisingly, wasnt too bad and I've decided how to put them back in. I'll save that for when I post the next round of photos.



For now, I wait for better weather and more free time.




(Another reason not much has happened was a great Easter weekend playing cards and drinking in VT.)

Chainplates started...

Finally made some progress with the chainplates. I was worried that I was going to have to replace them because they looked corroded (at least on the backing plates) and I couldn't tell if they were original to the boat or if they were replaced.


The bolts have wasted away and stained the paint with rust. I couldn't really tell if the chainplate was also corroded.

I tried to find out if they were original or not by emailing other owners to ask what theirs looked like. The other boats had chainplates bolted to small knees. I know that they are this way on the 26's and 27's as well. The ones on this boat lay against the inside of the hull and encapsulated in a beefy hollow fiberglass rib a couple inches deep and wide. They're bolted to this rib with a weep hole at the bottom to allow moisture to run out if/when water works its way into the channel. There is one bolt attaching the top of it to the wood supporting the deck. The bolt here is wasted away but the exposed part of the plate looks OK. It looks even better top sides where it comes through the deck.


Beneath the top bolt are three bolts attaching the plate to the inside of the fiberglass channel. Again the bolts are useless but it already looks better with out the backing plate and rust.



Most of the bolts broke apart when trying to remove them. The easiest way to deal with them was to just grind them flush and then drill them out. I was worried about what was going on behind the glass. I had been reading about crevice corrosion in chainplates recently (and the questionable quality of Asian metals in 60's boats) and needed to get a better look at them to be sure they were going to be safe. One thing I did know was that they seemed big for this size boat. I guess because the boat was designed to be an offshore boat, the chainplates were overbuilt like everything else

The best way to know what was going on was to just open them right up and take a look. I started by taking off the backing plates, then grinding the bolts down and boring out the "bolt remnants".


Then put on the storm trooper suit and cut off the front of the channel encasing the chainplate.

Once this was done it was simple to just pull the chainplate through the deck. After seeing it, it was clear that they were original to the boat. Like all the hardware on the boat, it had "1507" chiseled into it, along with some Chinese characters. Wiping off any stains and dust and the plate itself looked great. No fissures, or crevice corrosion. No cracks or deterioration. They look good for being 42 years old.


So I'm thinking of just drilling out the bolts in the other five plates, retapping the threads, setting new bronze screws in place and putting the cleaned up backing plates back on.


OR, cut them all out, taking a good close look at all of them and finding a better way to mount them to the hull. Makes sense to get a close look at all of them and to do it now while the boat is empty.

OR better yet, cut them all out and throw them away. In the remaining glass channels, bed some hardwood in glass then get a 12 foot bar of silc bronze, cut it into 2 ft lengths and bolt them to the outside of the hull. Strong, less leaks and really easy to keep and eye on.
Got the pricing for the bronze today...

OR bolt the bronze outside the hull?

We'll see.

31 foot (4 inch) spruce cigar box.

(Pictures were taken with the Treo phone, so they're not that great. Click to enlarge them)

"Work" has started on the mast ...

For the last couple of weeks, the mast has been outside at my place covered only with a thin piece of plastic (but by the looks of it, this was better than the way it's been stored for the last several years.) It has almost no varnish left on it and looked to be completely delaminated. When moving it here, I was afraid it would break because there was absolutely no rigidity or strength to it. It made the worst sounds, creaks and cracks. I wasn't sure if it would be salvageable or not and had planned on just using the old mast as a guide/template to build a new one.
So, the other day, we carefully picked it up, put it on a truck rack and because it was so fragile, it needed to be supported by placing it on a staging platform first. It was brought it over to the barn and after hauling it up through the window we just kind of stared at it for a while. It was the first time I had a real chance to look at it closely.

Considering making it into a couple of flyrods instead.
Even before we could think of the repairing/rebuilding process, I think we were first trying to figure out what was holding it together. It wasn't the glue, that was long gone. I had thought that the glue used was something along the lines of resourcinol, from what I could find on the Internet, but after looking at it, I wonder if it was something closer to casein. Something water soluble that failed when the varnish was destroyed. It doesn't really matter at this point because, this adhesive, whatever it was was GONE. We looked at it for about 10-20 minutes, had a drink and planned the attack. How to take this thing apart without ruining it? How to take it apart with out ruining what was really a lucky break. That is, the way this thing was stored and the condition it was in was lousy but, if it was going to be completely rebuilt anyways, then it was lucky that it was as bad as it was. Because there was no adhesive left, the pieces would come apart wholly and cleanly (I hoped). If they were in good shape with no rot or fractures. then we were in business.

No adhesive left, at all.
We picked at it for a while, scraping the last remaining flakes of varnish off and started to toss ideas around for the next couple steps, cleaning it and gluing it back up etc.

No varnish.
First though, it would have to come apart, and that was going to take more time than we had that night.

I went back last night and we were able to take off the hardware in stages. It looked like the hardware, mast band and any through-bolts were the only things keeping the mast from crumbling into it separate pieces onto the floor.

Rigging and hardware in surprisingly great shape.
The spreaders, tangs, instrument ends, sheaves etc from the mast head and other hardware came off easily. Once everything was removed, the mast fell open like an old dry cigar box. We removed the wiring from the inside and it was done. There was now one long piece that runs the length of the aft face of the mast, with the bronze sail track still attached (it runs the full length and there must be 50 screws, so that stayed on).

Bottom of sailtrack.
There was also the Port and Stbd faces which were four pieces all together, two pieces scarfed together to make up each side and lastly, there was two pieces scarfed together making up the leading edge.

Scarf.
On the inside of the mast, about halfway down, was a small 2 ft long board that was water soaked and rotten. It looked like there may have even been some bugs staying in there at some point.

Rotten, wet mystery wood.
This thankfully, was the only real damage to the whole mast. I think that if this had sat there outside for another spring, unprotected, this rot would have likely spread and if it was 6 months earlier, the pieces probably wouldn't have come apart so easily and cleanly. Good timing.

Not a drop of glue.
So for now, the pieces sit there on a shelf in the barn/workshop and wait to be cleaned up and rebuilt. The hardware filled a large recycling box, sits in my workshop at home and is waiting to rejoin the rest.

Spreaders will need replacing, if the kid is ever going to jump off of these.


Beefy Cheoy Lee hardware still in great condition.

For the cost of two Heinekens, we had a "consultant" look at it and suggest some ways to make a frame to hold the pieces of the mast together during the glue up.

Hopefully sometime soon I'll get to it.