[Rhodes22-list] My new toy.... Talk me into saving it

Thu Oct 30 09:02:36 EDT 2014

Hi Brad:

The deck is a three layer sandwich with plywood as the core in older boats like ours. The fibreglass top deck is fairly thick but the fibreglass liner is very thin. The core is roughly 1" thick. I think the picture of the lag screw jack that I sent yesterday gives you a good cross sectional view of the deck. 

Normally both the outer deck skin and the liner are bonded solidly to the core but that might not be the case now. When you drill down go slowly as you do not want to penetrate the liner on the inside of the boat. Otherwise any epoxy that you inject will just pour through and that stuff is too expensive to waste. You should be able to feel when the bit touches the liner as it is much harder than the wood core. You will get the feel for it very quickly.

Fiberglas work is not difficult and is something you will pick up easily. There are few mistakes that cannot be fixed with sanding although that can be a pain in the ass. The one thing to watch is that you mix the resin and hardener thoroughly and in exact proportions. Unhardened epoxy is a mess to remove. 

Decide if you are going to use epoxy or polyester resin. Polyester is much cheaper, cures quicker  and is more forgiving in the resin to hardener proportions. By adding more or less hardener you can change the pot life of the mix. Polyester is also much weaker and less moisture resistant than epoxy. Most boat yards prefer to use polyester where expense and time is more important than longevity. I used epoxy as time to cure was never a problem for me - I simply don't work that fast. You always mix the exact amount of hardener specified and control the pot life by using different hardeners. Epoxy will bond to polyester, which is what your boat is made of, but polyester does not bond well to epoxy so you will probably want to stick with one or the other.

Graham

Graham Stewart
gstewart8 at cogeco.ca
613 389-1737

-----Original Message-----
From: rhodes22-list-bounces at rhodes22.org [mailto:rhodes22-list-bounces at rhodes22.org] On Behalf Of The Rhodes 22 Email List
Sent: October-29-14 10:28 PM
To: The Rhodes 22 Email List
Subject: Re: [Rhodes22-list] My new toy.... Talk me into saving it

Well, if its nice tomorrow, I might start drilling and probing. I've been reading on this all afternoon and most people only have problems around the fittings and hatches. Mine looks like the whole thing... I appreciate all your help.Now, if I understand this, as I drill down, I should have a layer of fiberglass and the core. Then under the hole should be the lower layer of fiberglass and under that the cabin liner right?
I wanted to learn this fiberglassing.... looks like I might be doing it in a major way.....
Thanks Graham,
Brad Bachelor

Marrying an old bachelor is like buying second-hand furniture. -- Helen Rowland 1875-1950, American Journalist
      From: The Rhodes 22 Email List <rhodes22-list at rhodes22.org>
 To: 'The Rhodes 22 Email List' <rhodes22-list at rhodes22.org>
 Sent: Wednesday, October 29, 2014 8:00 PM
 Subject: Re: [Rhodes22-list] My new toy.... Talk me into saving it

You deck looks much worse than mine was. I would start by drilling fairly large holes down to be not through the liner and carefully examine the core material that the drill bit extracts. If it is wet, injected epoxy will be useless and the only course open to you that I can think of is to remove the core and replace it with good material. You should drill a systematic pattern to make sure you don't miss any areas - every 4" should be good. While you are at it, check out the side decks and cabin top. If they are punky too, then I think the boat should be considered a write-off. By the way, I had a surveyor check my deck with a moisture meter but that turned out to not be an accurate indication of the actual situation.

In my case the only area that was wet was about a square foot around the air vent near the bow but I didn't know that until I removed the deck and separated the deck skin from the liner. I just assumed that if the deck was soft it must be rotten. 

The plywood core had delaminated from the skin and even the different plys had separated. The bond between the plywood core and the deck skin was very poor amounting to what looked like random strips of silicone and with time and flexing of the deck it simply let go. Certainly removing the deck and recoreing it - or doing this without removing the deck will give the best results.

Taking the sag out of your deck might be difficult. If the core is solid and just delaminated, and I doubt that it is, you might put jacks inside the boat to see if you can push it back and hold it there while you inject the epoxy. If you decide to remove the deck, you can set up a frame of some sort to hold the outer skin in place while you place and laminate the new core. 

At one point I was trying to devise a system to press up on the deck to adjust its shape while it was on the boat and came up with a simple system that used a frame with vertical 2x4s into which I screwed heavy lad screws into the end of each upright piece. I then put scratch pads on the head of the lag screw to avoid damaging the liner. I placed the frame on the V-birth and buy unscrewing the lag screw I was able to exert considerable pressure upwards in very fine increments - without  spending a fortune of jacks. I have attached a photo that shows some of these lag screw jacks.  My intention was to use this system to bend the deck at the join to fit the shape of the deck on the other side of the join. With the new core the deck was far too rigid for this to work, but in your case it might be worth considering.

Removing the foredeck in my case was remarkably easy. I removed the rub rail, cut through the deck in front of the cabin with a circular saw, drilled out the rivets that joined the hull and deck and was able to break the seal fairly easily. The deck then just lifted off in my hands. Most of the time was taken up just trying to get up the nerve to cut across the deck but in my case, like yours, I felt that once I had removed the deck and pulled the layers apart I would know better what I was in for while not investing anything thus far. If it was not reparable then it would go to the dump anyway so there wasn't much to lose. 

Once the deck is removed you can examine the cut edge in front of the cabin and see if there is rot there. If there is then you may find that it is all too far gone.

As I mentioned, getting the deck off and rebuilding it with a new core and reinstalling the liner was not all that difficult. What was far more difficult was putting the darned thing back on so that it didn't look like Frankenstein. That required a lot of grinding and filling to make the join invisible - especially for me as at that point I had never done anything like that before and so I wasted a lot of time getting it right. If you have any body work experience it would go faster. The last picture was taken after the deck was reinstalled and the fairing completed but before it was glassed over and painted.

If you do remove the deck to replace the core, you will need to set up some kind of form to hold the deck skin in the shape you want it to be when you are finished. Bonding plywood will make the deck completely rigid and you will not be able to shape it to fit  afterwards. In my case the form was a very simple T with the cross piece shaped to the curve that I took from the deck in front of the cabin. Given the deck distortion in your situation you might need something with more crosspieces. I have attached two pictures - one of the form and the other of the deck in the form after reinstalling the liner. I built up the core using layers of 1/8" marine plywood - with epoxy sealing all surfaces and thickened epoxy bonding the layers. I had to temporarily screw each layer right down through the deck in order to make it take the shape as well as use timbers to clamp the whole thing to the frame. That obviously put lots of holes in the deck but given that I knew I would need repai!
 r the deck anyway, that didn't matter. 

Once the deck was reinstalled, I covered the entire non-skid area of the entire fore and side decks with a layer of cloth to cover all of the holes and then filed and faired the whole thing until it looked right. Doing the gunwales was the hard part but I won't bother you with the details unless you actually decide to plunge in. I have more photos of the steps and tools that I developed  to do this work if you would like them.

Enough for now. If you decide to go further I am happy to share my experience as it would be comforting to think that I was not the only person out there who would do such a thing.

Although it made no sense from either a financial or time perspective to do this, I am pretty happy about how the boat is turning out and am still glad that I decided to do it. Better than watching endless games of hockey over those years.

Graham 

-----Original Message-----
From: rhodes22-list-bounces at rhodes22.org [mailto:rhodes22-list-bounces at rhodes22.org] On Behalf Of The Rhodes 22 Email List
Sent: October-29-14 4:38 PM
To: The Rhodes 22 Email List
Subject: Re: [Rhodes22-list] My new toy.... Talk me into saving it

Graham,I have been all over these archives reading your posts. My Rhodes is a 1974 and it looks like there are alot of similarities between our boats.
I am curious how you would have fixed your deck without removing it. Would you have done like on the cabin sides and drilled every 4 inches? What I'm thinking you are doing here is drilling in a grid and then forcing epoxy into the holes and it fills voids in between the holes??  Any ideas on how to support the deck so I could maintain its original shape??? The deck is my main concern right now. My secondary concern is the severe gelcoat cracking.
I think I have the floor thing down with the bracing. My other worry though is that all the cleats are plastic. In your adventures, did you find backing plates on any of these?? If not, I think I can make that cabin liner look like swiss cheese in a hurry!!!

Brad Bachelor

Marrying an old bachelor is like buying second-hand furniture. -- Helen Rowland 1875-1950, American Journalist

    From: The Rhodes 22 Email List <rhodes22-list at rhodes22.org>
 To: 'The Rhodes 22 Email List' <rhodes22-list at rhodes22.org>
 Sent: Wednesday, October 29, 2014 2:47 PM
 Subject: Re: [Rhodes22-list] My new toy.... Talk me into saving it

Hi Brad:

I imagine that you are disappointed to find the boat in the condition it is in.

My boat is a 76 and I have had to address all of the problems you listed and a few more that might still be there to discover. I am into my 4th year of reconstruction - recognizing two limiting factors - 1, I am in Ontario and have only a few months each year when I can work on the boat and 2, I am massively slow in part because I knew nothing about fixing the boat when I started so much of this was a learning experience. A third factor which I should also admit to is that I did just about everything at least twice - and always the hard way. If you decide to proceed with this project I might be able to at least point out my rich and varied history of mistakes.

Even without my limitations though it is a big, big project. My advice would be that unless you really enjoy the process of reconstruction, don't do it.
I am one of those perverse types who really loves to do the work and get great satisfaction from it even when I am hanging upside down sanding epoxy in 90 degree weather for hours. But if you are doing this just because you want a boat, chances are that the cost and effort will take its toll long before the boat is ready. It is very easy to grossly underestimate the cost of reconstruction. I wouldn't dare let my wife see my records. 

Most of my reconstruction efforts are included in various postings to the list and if you search the archive under my name you will find discussion on how I fixed the sunken deck, repaired the keel, centreboard and rudder, ground out the gelcoat cracks and painted the deck, reinforced the cabin sides, and so forth. I am currently replacing the ports with tinted Plexiglas strips which I hope to be able to attach without hardware. I have the Plexiglas but the attachment will not occur now until spring. At that point I will be rebuilding the entire inside of the boat including the floor stringers, bulkheads, galley and head area - for the second time. Of course there were tens of thousands of minor things I did along the way or still await my attention like installing new chainplates, rub rail, pulpits, paint the interior and so forth. My ultimate goal is to complete the boat before I die. Right now it seems to be a tossup as to which will occurs first. 

Feel free to ask if I can be of any assistance.

Graham Stewart
gstewart8 at cogeco dot ca

-----Original Message-----
From: rhodes22-list-bounces at rhodes22.org
[mailto:rhodes22-list-bounces at rhodes22.org] On Behalf Of The Rhodes 22 Email List
Sent: October-29-14 12:16 PM
To: Rhodes 22 list serv
Subject: [Rhodes22-list] My new toy.... Talk me into saving it

I just got back home last night from a trip to get a 1974 Rhodes from her original owner. Now don't get me wrong, I knew this was not a show piece when I got it, but inspecting it today, shows I have some serious issues. I guess what I'm asking is can I fix em all.... Here's some of them (pics
attached)

1. The deck is sunken in the midde and very soft. It looks the way to strengthen it is through the cabin liner. Or is there another way???
2. Gelcoat cracks and crazing all over. This would not be a simple grind it out and fill it proposition. The surface of the boat looks more like a road map of the eastern United States!!
3. The floors are all rottted out and there is still water in it (I see how to fix this, so I think this will be easy 4. The concrete in the keel area is all broken up (this worries me alot). I guess I could chisel it out and pour more, but has anyone had success doing this??
5. Cushions are toast
6. Bushings are missing from the (old) roller furling system (what type of material is this???:)

This is just the start. I told myself, that when I went to pick it up, I could always get my money out of it by using the hardware to improve my current boat, sell the trailer, and saw her up, but then again, I've always wanted a Rhodes 22..... I really am on the fence on this.... Can I fix her??
Should I scrap her????

Brad Bachelor 

Marrying an old bachelor is like buying second-hand furniture. -- Helen Rowland 1875-1950, American Journalist __________________________________________________
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