Ooo! Sparkly! Redfury's Grinding again!

[redfury]

Re: Ooo! Sparkly! Redfury's Grinding again!

Up, up and away!

The plan is to slide the trailer under the boat and support it with wood blocks.

Ah, the aqualift 2 hull. This is the only time I want to see the bottom of my boat though. I'd rather enjoy the ride from the hull than enjoy the sculpted abs of my boat.

The smaller Maple tree held up beautifully during the flip also. To think that I almost cut this little guy down!

Getting the boat down ended up being the harder part of the process. The ratchet goes down one click at a time ( or more if you work at it ). The rear was pretty easy. Getting that logging chain off the front was a pain.

I got the rear of the boat situated pretty good on the trailer, and attempted to reverse the process in which I got the nose up in the first place. Didn't go as easily. See, the crank for the boat is on the tree side of the trailer and the trailer was wedging up against the tree and I couldn't run the winch handle very well. So, I ended up using an improvised car bumper jack my dad had done some "work" to, along with a piece of plywood that I had done some "work" to, to extend its range. With those, I jacked the nose of the boat up a bit from underneath, enough to remove the bolt and settle the hull on the suspended trailer. Then with some finagling, I got the boat cranked back to earth.

Then it was a matter of leveling the bow and stern so it would ride of the trailer without shifting or falling off.

2x3's I had laying around from my dad when he moved. Cut them to lengths that would work and I now have a nice surface to work on. I might even see paint on this beast before winter?

 

[redfury]

Re: Ooo! Sparkly! Redfury's Grinding again!

To be honest, I didn't think I'd have the boat to this point this year. I think looking at some of the projects here put a bug up my butt and got me in gear finally! Hard to complain about that!

So, now I REALLY have to decide what color I'm going to paint the bottom now, huh?

 

[jcsercsa]

Re: Ooo! Sparkly! Redfury's Grinding again!

Its about time Mike !!!! LOL

 

[redfury]

Re: Ooo! Sparkly! Redfury's Grinding again!

Its about time Mike !!!! LOL

No kidding, huh? :redface: Wanna come help block sand the thing?

 

[vegasphotoman]

Re: Ooo! Sparkly! Redfury's Grinding again!

yea ya got her upside down......now happy sanding!

 

[redfury]

Re: Ooo! Sparkly! Redfury's Grinding again!

yea ya got her upside down......now happy sanding!

Yup, I found a couple of places that need some repair from getting smacked on the trailer in a previous life, etc that I will have to address, but Marine tex or that Ace Hardware brand epoxy putty is going to do the trick there just fine. I just gotta get some first! It's going to be nice to have the part of the project that I can truly just go and tinker with at my leisure instead of having to set aside blocks of time to do.

 

[BobsGlasstream]

Re: Ooo! Sparkly! Redfury's Grinding again!

Hey Refury,
I have seen that before. I'm sure it will be better then trying to sand it while on your back. Nice use of the trees too. I used a tree and my little tractor. Next time I'm using two trees. My tractor almost went over.
Great to see your progress.
Keep the pic's coming.
Take care
Bob

 

[redfury]

Re: Ooo! Sparkly! Redfury's Grinding again!

I know for sure my 18hp lawn tractor wouldn't hold that boat in the air. I had thought about using my truck, but figured that doing everything manually would work better solo than trying to use any kind of power equipment to do the job safely....though I did have a pretty good idea of how to raise the boat up in the air using the trailer hitch of my truck. I just didn't have the lumber available to implement it.

 

[BobsGlasstream]

Re: Ooo! Sparkly! Redfury's Grinding again!

You got her done safely, that's all that matters.
My little tractor is a 20 HP 4 Wheel drive diesel, with loader and the 5 ft bush hog on the back for counter balance. I'll use the trees next time for sure.
Bob

 

[redfury]

Re: Ooo! Sparkly! Redfury's Grinding again!

Well, at least yours qualifies as a "tractor"

I do have a friend with an "M", but I don't think he'd want to drive it the 25miles down the highway to get to my place to use it.

 

[redfury]

Re: Ooo! Sparkly! Redfury's Grinding again!

Smallish projects...like THIS!

Which turned into this!

Apparently, the damage was caused by someone shooting the boat before I had bought it...that's a .22 bullet I'd guess...I flicked it out with the sander and couldn't find it. This repair turned into...

This! It took a total of 7 layers of glass, with layers starting as small as a half dollar radiating out to the size of the entire patch. Since some were small, I laid it up all at the same time. I had ground all the way down to the layer of 1708 I had put behind this spot earlier! I laid up all the glass on a piece of plastic sheeting and then slapped it on like a bandage and rolled it out and left the plastic on overnight.

This is what I'm left with after sanding it with 80 grit and a 7inch sander. I'll fair it out when I start dealing with the millions of osmosis blisters coming up!

 

[redfury]

Re: Ooo! Sparkly! Redfury's Grinding again!

Onto the osmosis blisters! I had a hard time seeing them all, so I pulled out the rattle can black primer to help highlight them all....

Oh, that isn't all of the areas with them, just the highest concentration of them. So, I figured I'd show everyone what an osmosis blister is, and what to do about them ( the horde ).
First off, these are osmosis blisters...

I found this bit to be extremely handy for this work, as you can hit them from different angles...side, straight in, and get the same results.

And as you can see in this picture, what the bit does to the blisters. Now, when you are grinding them, what are you dealing with?

That is a blister up close and personal. You can see the separation of the gel coat and the underlying glass. The dark areas are voids. This needs to be ground away until the gel coat is touching the glass without ANY rough edge.
Water gets between the gel coat and the first layer of glass, heat and cold expansion causes it to push the weaker gel coat up into a domed blister. Usually caused from leaving a boat in the water for extended periods of time.

This is what your blisters will look like after a quick sanding to highlight them. Notice that I highlighted even the very small bumps...grind them out, and you will find the same thing on a smaller scale as the preceding picture points out.

And here's a good hour of grinding out blisters on the starboard side of the boat. From the stern to the bow about 3/4th of the length of the boat. I haven't touched the strake yet and there are surely some stragglers that I've missed. I would have counted them all for giggles, but got distracted by other things and now it's too dark and the skeeters are thick, so you'll have to wait for a count later....or guess how many there are for cash and prizes!

 

[redfury]

Re: Ooo! Sparkly! Redfury's Grinding again!

A few more pics of the extent of the blisters.

In this last picture, you can see what the blister looks like after just breaking through the gel coat. You will notice while grinding that you are getting into the blister when the center of your grind billows up a bit as the gel gets thin. I grind these out in small bursts with the grinding tip I have. For one, it doesn't load the dremel excessively, and also it allows me to grind a bit and keep an eye on the repair to see if it's down far enough without going too crazy with the grinding.

Considering the numbers of them ( the horde ), it went pretty quickly.

 

[BobsGlasstream]

Re: Ooo! Sparkly! Redfury's Grinding again!

Wow Redfury,
That is really wild.
I can see why you want to get away from gel coat. I didn't see a single blister like that on my boat. I wonder if it was something that started when they built the boat?
Have fun grinding and filling.
Take care
Bob

 

[jcsercsa]

Re: Ooo! Sparkly! Redfury's Grinding again!

OHH man mike ,that really stinks !!! John

 

[redfury]

Re: Ooo! Sparkly! Redfury's Grinding again!

Wow Redfury,
That is really wild.
I can see why you want to get away from gel coat. I didn't see a single blister like that on my boat. I wonder if it was something that started when they built the boat?
Have fun grinding and filling.
Take care
Bob

It makes me wonder. Hard to say not knowing how they ran the shop in the day. If they sprayed the Gel coat the night before and then started glassing the next day and some condensation formed inside the hull, that would be my guess as there are blisters along ridge lines. Fortunately, none of the blisters are larger than a pomegranate seed, but there are just so many of them, which is why I just refer to them as ( the horde ).

I knew the boat had 'em when I bought it and it did raise a flag that day as to if I should really buy the boat. But hey, I'm stubborn as a mule, I've gotten this far. The slow progress on the boat has sped up considerably with the completion of the stringers and deck, so I'm still going to go at it and do my best to make the boat right.

Parts of me wonder if it's even worth tinkering with ( the horde ), but I'm going to just keep at it since I've opened up the can of worms already...might as well fish with them!

 

[HVAC Cruiser]

Re: Ooo! Sparkly! Redfury's Grinding again!

WOW Red,

all those blisters like that is crazy. You did a great job sanding them with that little die grinder/sander.

All that tedious grinding maybe you should change your avatar from AD/HD to OCD

 

[redfury]

Re: Ooo! Sparkly! Redfury's Grinding again!

WOW Red,

all those blisters like that is crazy. You did a great job sanding them with that little die grinder/sander.

All that tedious grinding maybe you should change your avatar from AD/HD to OCD

Naw, problem with them is that I get tired of grinding them and get distracted by other things. I'm going fishing.

 

[ondarvr]

Re: Ooo! Sparkly! Redfury's Grinding again!

I didn't know you were dealing with blisters.

Those blisters are due to the builder using putty to fill all of the difficult to roll areas, some builders will use it in a radius or a recessed area to help prevent air bubbles from being left in the laminate. Its a good idea, but frequently poorly executed, if they use the wrong putty, or use even the right one incorrectly, the bond between the gel coat and putty will be weak, resulting blisters.

The problem is that although you?ve ground out each blister and plan to fix each one, the entire bond line between the gel coat and putty is poor and these blisters are just the first places to visibly fail. As time goes on the entire area will become one big blister, although the spots you repair will hold up, but only those spots.

 

[BobsGlasstream]

Re: Ooo! Sparkly! Redfury's Grinding again!

Wow, That bites.
ondarvr,
Does that mean what I think it means? Should he grind the whole side area off.
RedFury,
I would hate to see you abort the boat after all the work you have already put in her.
Good luck
Bob