69 Woodson Tri-hull with 68 Johnson 55hp

[sphelps]

Glad to be onboard for whatever I can help with .
‘I only did for the girls what I’m sure 99% of the members here would have done for them under the circumstances..
I made 2 more wonderful friends in the process which was worth all the effort imho ...

 

[Hab]

I got a little further this weekend. Manged to get the center stringer out and put up a grinding tent. I went ahead and bought a respirator and it was worth every penny, even if it only blocked the smell of ground glass. I spent 2 hours sunday grinding on the horrible cuts i made to get the stingers out. I did try to feather in all my cut edges around the stringer cuts, but the glass was descent in some places, but not tied in well in others. I think im trying to do too good of a job, by grinding the glass back to a clean feathered surface. I was being way to careful and left myself a ton to grind off. Next up is to grind of the transom and bulk of the hull. I think Im going to go as minimal as possible on the hull, knock off the bad spots and scuff everything else. Im going to leave the deck remnants and the sidewalls till im ready for the deck. hopefully having the old floor height will come in handy. One note about the tent, it does a descent job of keeping the dust in, but it heats up like a greenhouse. I guess ill have to do most of the grinding late at night or early in the morning. I also learned that for every 2 hours of grinding i have 2-3 hours of cleaning up for myself and my tools.

Question: what the heck do i do about the corners at the transom/sidewall. looks like the old adhesive or filler glass stuff. im not sure Ive got the grinding skill to carve that out cleanly.

the pics stink, but honest injun grinding down the remnants of the stringers was a task

 

[Woodonglass]

By looking at the pics, IMHO you still have a lot of grinding left on the stringer channels.
I'd HIGHLY recommend a Multi-Tool with a blade like this.. It'll cut that build up of glass fairly quickly. It may take a couple of blades butt it'll do the job.
.

 

[gm280]

Looks like you are doing a great job. Bottom line is, grinding old fiberglass stinks, literally and figuratively! If you own any die grinders, (electric or pneumatic), get some round sanding tubes to help in the corners. When working on a boat, you have to think of every thing you have, and even some things you don't have YET, to help. Glad you bought that quality face mast... Only have two lungs!

 

[kcassells]

Yup so you really want to come out @ 6"8" from each stringer center. So when you tab back in the 1st tab will have 3-4" onto the hull surface and the next pc is @ 2" wider. Clean glass like above to promote adhesion.
Lookin Great!
The blade wog shows is for a multi tool. The have a lot of great attachments for tight areas. They have round, triangle, and diamond coated accessories. Go electric cause the batteries never last long enough on all that glass.

 

[sphelps]

Yep you will need to grind back at least 6” or so on both sides of the stringers .
What are you grinding with ? I suggest an angle grinder with the plastic backer plate using the 36 grit round resin disks . The splatter / zolatone finish is some tough stuff so get quite a few disk

 

[Hab]

The channels i left on the stringers were high 1-2" and there were large pools of resin sloughed off from where the wood, was set an inch or so from the chine. I got all that garbage cleaned off and almost completely feathered back to the hull. Ive got something like that oscillating tool on loan for a tile job, it might help me dig out the gunk on the transom corners, if that don't work im going with GM and getting a descent die grinder, and some new bits for my air hammer.

I went and upgraded my grinder with the sanding wheel and 36 grit disks. They will eat some fiberglass, i burned through (3) in the 2 hours i was playing with it. Shop vac had a good 5-6 lbs of dust in it.

 

[gm280]

The channels i left on the stringers were high 1-2" and there were large pools of resin sloughed off from where the wood, was set an inch or so from the chine. I got all that garbage cleaned off and almost completely feathered back to the hull. Ive got something like that oscillating tool on loan for a tile job, it might help me dig out the gunk on the transom corners, if that don't work im going with GM and getting a descent die grinder, and some new bits for my air hammer.

I went and upgraded my grinder with the sanding wheel and 36 grit disks. They will eat some fiberglass, i burned through (3) in the 2 hours i was playing with it. Shop vac had a good 5-6 lbs of dust in it.

You really need to watch the shop vac. Fiberglass dust will ruin one pretty quick. I used a Dust Deputy setup so the fiberglass dust actually never ends up in the shop vac. If you don't want to make a Dust Deputy setup right now, at least clean the vac often AND blow out the motor a lot more. The dust will get into the motor and burn it out from over heating.

 

[Hab]

You really need to watch the shop vac. Fiberglass dust will ruin one pretty quick. I used a Dust Deputy setup so the fiberglass dust actually never ends up in the shop vac. If you don't want to make a Dust Deputy setup right now, at least clean the vac often AND blow out the motor a lot more. The dust will get into the motor and burn it out from over heating.

yeah...... the clean up........its far worse than the grinding.

 

[Hab]

Not much to report on this week just more grinding.....what a grind. I got further out on the hull enough to tab in around the stringers, but im not down to contigous glass. there are dry holes and dry cloth in various areas. Im not sure ill ever get all the bad spots completely removed. Im wondering now how clean it really needs to be.

 

[gm280]

Not much to report on this week just more grinding.....what a grind. I got further out on the hull enough to tab in around the stringers, but im not down to contigous glass. there are dry holes and dry cloth in various areas. Im not sure ill ever get all the bad spots completely removed. Im wondering now how clean it really needs to be.

Grounding and getting it ready for new material is different for everyone and every hull. When I started grinding my hull, I literally ground everything because I was going to apply new CSM fiberglass over the entire hull. And my reason at the time was because I had some serious hull damage from whoever own the boat before me. Looks like whoever that was ran the boat into some serious rocks or something. So I laid new fiberglass over the entire hull. So you have to make the decision how much and how far you want to grind the old glass out.

There is no one-size-fits-all situations with boats and their repairs. Just remember, it is a ton easier to do such things now then way later if you change your mind about it. And now you also see how you will own this boat and know more about it then even the factory did. So let your own mind be your guide. When you finish this project, you will show a lot of pride in doing it right and by yourself. There will be no guess work or iffy rebuilds. JMHO

Post some pictures even if you don't think you did much. We love to see progress however small you thing it is. And the feedback from such pictures will certainly help you as well.

 

[kcassells]

If you have holes thru the transom that's coming out you can hose that crapola right out.

 

[Hab]

Thanks guys, ill get some photos up tonight of the bad glass and the cracks along the keel. I was forced to stop last night when my grinder quit on me. I have a good Dewalt grinder, but its older and one of the cheaper of the line, keeps burning the wire between the brushes and the switch for some reason. Ill have to get that fixed this weekend and probably pick up a throw away grinder to finish out the demo.

 

[gm280]

Thanks guys, ill get some photos up tonight of the bad glass and the cracks along the keel. I was forced to stop last night when my grinder quit on me. I have a good Dewalt grinder, but its older and one of the cheaper of the line, keeps burning the wire between the brushes and the switch for some reason. Ill have to get that fixed this weekend and probably pick up a throw away grinder to finish out the demo.

What you are presently doing is extremely hard on power equipment. The heat, dust and such makes them earn their keeps. So not too unusual for that to happen. Bearings catch it the worst. But armature and field windings do heat up and demand more current. If you have a nice fan, place that so that it blows the dust away from your face. That will also help the power equipment. JAS

 

[Hab]

I managed to get the grinder going again tonight and good news I get nearly a full half day to grind tomorrow, somethings bound to get broken.....yeah.... Also here are some pics of the hull at the bow 1/3 of the boat. the glass has tons of dri spots in it, and the keel has massive cracking, coincidentally the worst of which seems centered over a roller on the trailer. Weird..... i can hear a long lost voice from my childhood..."God-^&*%it Hab, its not a trampoline".
Im not sure what to do about the dri spots, the first few i found i tried to grind down to contiguous glass, but i found more dri spots in the next layer of roving. You know the dri-spots managed to hold together for the last 50 years, so that gives me hope that even if i do a standard Hab-assed job on this rebuild, its still likely to outlive me.

 

[kcassells]

TH
he cracks look like overpoured resin that's, no structure value. Pretty common Knock out the best ya can the dry spots. Then roll some resin over see how they look then.

 

[sphelps]

Yep like Kc said . Old stringer bedding and not surprised it was at a roller position .. With rotten stringers nothing to really keep it from cracking .. I would use some 1/4” milled fibers to your pb mix when you bed in the new stringers ...

 

[Hab]

Got some more in today, i scuffed and ground over about 90% of the hull, I still have the transom and a section on the port side. I got to the point where i really dont know what im doing, i dont know much about composites. There doesnt seem to be any one layer that is without dry section of roving, holes under the roving, or cracked resin pools. There also doesnt seem to be any one identifiable layer across the entire hull. I can either grind off another 30 lbs of dust or do my best to make the next layer on top better.

Lessons learned to this point. 1. the 24 grit sanding disc work pretty well and the dust seems to be larger in size more like salt and less like talc. Dont skimp on the discs. I bout 10 disks to work with and i wished i had 30, they seem to cut like crazy for a certain amount of time then i had to push the ginder harder, and my grinder didnt like that at all in the high particulate environment.

I think i need to take a little time this week and learn more about composite construction, and what is good or bad and decide on an acceptance criteria for the amount of flaws im looking at.

 

[sphelps]

As long as you get down to clean glass you’ll be fine ... Are you going back with epoxy or poly ?

 

[gm280]

If it is any consolation, you are presently doing the absolute worst part of any boat building. Once you get through this stage, the rest is a lot nicer to work with then this stinky, smelly, itchy, crappy work. And just from the pictures, you're going about it correct. Don't try to get every little void, problem ground out. Once you removed the top old glass, fair in the best you can and move on. All boats have those same issues. That was one reason I covered the entire hull with CSM and poly. But looking back, it probably wasn't really needed.

Your new stringers, transom and floor will adhere to those ground surfaces perfectly and forever. :thumb::thumb: