NWCafesurfer
Cadet
- Joined
- Jul 11, 2018
- Messages
- 6
I knew I wanted a Starcraft cuddy cabin ever since I saw the restomods here on iBoats. Gorgeous classic boats with lots of light and windows in the cabin, the prospect of 'finding a deal' and building rather than buying. How could it be better than that?
Found the boat on craigslist ($1,600) out in Sequim, WA. We purchased it in 2019 right after we bought our house, somehow my wife agreed!
We went to work right away tearing out the soft deck, unfortunately there wasn't much that was salvageable... but I didn't see the dreaded stress cracks, so that's good! Heck even my wife pitched in and helped.
<Sorry no pictures of the tear down, didn't have a camera>
Among the rotted wood, shredded flotation foam and heavily pitted chrome plated zinc deck hardware we found a massive rat nest tucked in under the fwd cabin. This poses a major problem, ill get to that latter.
Undeterred, we pushed ahead stripping out wiring, removing fittings & windows, saving what we could. My amazing wife surprised me and paid for a mobile sandblaster team to come out and they basted it down to bare, clean aluminum. Way better than anything I could do!
No amount of paint stripper with my '2000psi' electric pressure washer could remove that paint, regardless of how good a turbo tip.
After the dust settled I began poking about inspecting the clean hull. Outside it looked and sounds solid, but then I began looking at that stained/ pitted spot under the rats nest.
Didn't know it at the time, but the ammonia in rat pee ate away at the aluminum. I have about a 'rather large' spot where the aluminum is very thin. How thin? I don't know & I'm afraid to find out =(
I'm from the marine industry, where we clad weld and/or remove and replace corroded bits of hull. But that doesn't work too well here. It seems the thing to do with ole tin hulls is patch it with a doubler plate. Is that even an option here? What do I do about the ribs that cross the damaged area? On closer inspection, one of the ribs has powdered aluminum oxide stuffed under it.
If I were to try and sand blast that spot (from the inside) I'm almost certain it would blow through. If somehow it didn't, I would have a 'clean' paper thin hull I could apply a doubler to. Even if I did this, the hull under the ribs is inaccessible and *could* be a disaster waiting to happen...
From the outside, the keel plate doubles up the damaged area pretty well, but im concerned..
I don't want to give up at this stage, but I'm concerned about making it safe. I mean honestly, how could one get a decent nights sleep out on Puget Sound with oxidized rat **** holding the water out?
If you have any ideas, questions or experiences; anything you think might help, I'm all ears. I really, really hope I can glean some knowledge to solve this one.
Found the boat on craigslist ($1,600) out in Sequim, WA. We purchased it in 2019 right after we bought our house, somehow my wife agreed!
We went to work right away tearing out the soft deck, unfortunately there wasn't much that was salvageable... but I didn't see the dreaded stress cracks, so that's good! Heck even my wife pitched in and helped.
<Sorry no pictures of the tear down, didn't have a camera>
Among the rotted wood, shredded flotation foam and heavily pitted chrome plated zinc deck hardware we found a massive rat nest tucked in under the fwd cabin. This poses a major problem, ill get to that latter.
Undeterred, we pushed ahead stripping out wiring, removing fittings & windows, saving what we could. My amazing wife surprised me and paid for a mobile sandblaster team to come out and they basted it down to bare, clean aluminum. Way better than anything I could do!
No amount of paint stripper with my '2000psi' electric pressure washer could remove that paint, regardless of how good a turbo tip.
After the dust settled I began poking about inspecting the clean hull. Outside it looked and sounds solid, but then I began looking at that stained/ pitted spot under the rats nest.
Didn't know it at the time, but the ammonia in rat pee ate away at the aluminum. I have about a 'rather large' spot where the aluminum is very thin. How thin? I don't know & I'm afraid to find out =(
I'm from the marine industry, where we clad weld and/or remove and replace corroded bits of hull. But that doesn't work too well here. It seems the thing to do with ole tin hulls is patch it with a doubler plate. Is that even an option here? What do I do about the ribs that cross the damaged area? On closer inspection, one of the ribs has powdered aluminum oxide stuffed under it.
If I were to try and sand blast that spot (from the inside) I'm almost certain it would blow through. If somehow it didn't, I would have a 'clean' paper thin hull I could apply a doubler to. Even if I did this, the hull under the ribs is inaccessible and *could* be a disaster waiting to happen...
From the outside, the keel plate doubles up the damaged area pretty well, but im concerned..
I don't want to give up at this stage, but I'm concerned about making it safe. I mean honestly, how could one get a decent nights sleep out on Puget Sound with oxidized rat **** holding the water out?
If you have any ideas, questions or experiences; anything you think might help, I'm all ears. I really, really hope I can glean some knowledge to solve this one.
