A restoration tale (with pics)

lignum wrote: »

Great work so far dnme, I'm very interested in how you were forming the windows. Iv seen people use vacuum bags when laminating timber, do you think the same thing would work for your windows?

Windows = disaster. I'm gonna glass up the sides of the window openings and try with a simpler rounded rectangular shape. If that doesn't work I'm gonna attack the boat with an axe.

Nah, I want to get wheels sorted out so that I can move the trailer around. I've bought 2 wheels with nearly new tyres for 20 quid on adverts as I mentioned earlier. That'll do me.
I can't work on the boat because of the weather. Even if the rain stops (which it has not since May 1st), it's too cold to work with epoxy so boat is on hold.

Guys, anyone with fibreglass experience, tell me, how would you go about tackling this?




Will I leave it alone?
Tackle it from inside?/outside?
Do I grind it out completely or leave some there?
If I epoxy glass from outside, how do I get the glass to stay up on the hull underside without falling / draping down?
What bout glassing around the keel?

Ive never dealt with fibreglass before and I'm worried that this repair is complex and maybe needs someone with experience. It involves a large area, it spreads from flat to the keel, it involves important structural areas etc.

Slig wrote: »

I'll probably get slated for this but if it were me:

1: mix up resin & hardener
2: hold fibreglass strands against hull
3: Dab resin into glass with a stiff bristled brush
4: leave to set, sand and repeat

Try to get it as smooth as possible before you leave it to set as its a b***ard to sand down after.

5: Spend the rest of the day trying to peel resin off your hands and arms while kicking yourself for not wearing gloves.

(PS the gloves dont work they just immediately stick together and you end up using your bare hands again anyway)

Not using strands, they are not compatible with Epoxy. I'm using woven coving, it's heavy stuff. I have a huge bodge repair as pictured above so my questions above remain

Will I leave it alone?
Tackle it from inside?/outside?
Do I grind it out completely or leave some there?
If I epoxy glass from outside, how do I get the glass to stay up on the hull underside without falling / draping down?
What bout glassing around the keel?

Day 20

Today for the first time in a number of years, I stole from a shop, more on that story later in the article. The weather took up yesterday and into today here in the rain sodden north west. It was an amzing feeling to get out and unwrap the boat. It's been a month since I have seen it. It felt like getting out of some kinda prison. So what have I been up to you ask.....

The trailer is coming on nicely. It's stripped down, treated, wire brushed and the entire underside now has two coats of Hammerite. It looks great and when it's finished and reassembled I'll post a photo or two of it. I went to Rochfortbridge on Sunday afternoon and picked up two 13" wheels with almost new tyres for 15 quid. The seller gave me a fiver off cos one of the wheels has a puncture which he declared and marked. So now I have a choice, I can go with 2 x 13" wheels or restore the 4 x 10" wheels but the 10" tyres (being a bit unusual these days) are €65-€70 a piece. Do I really want to spend €250 on tyres for that trailer?

I have been contemplating getting some glass and resin on the boat for ages now. I bought the dam stuff nearly 6 weeks ago now and it's been sitting in a box ever since. The weather here has been so bad that it not only kept me from getting at the boat, but it was so cold here at night that I actually kept the epoxy resin in near the fire to keep it warm overnight (it does not like getting cold).

Today at last, the temperatures rose and the sun came out. Time to try out a bit of glassing up. As some of you know, I went down the epoxy route. After much research, it seems you have to pick and choose your glass carefully depending on whether you go with epoxy or polyester resins. CSM is not suitable for epoxy, it is coated with styrene and really should only be used with polyester. So my choice for glass cloth is woven coving or roving or whatever the chuck it's called. It's only when the glass arrived that I realised what I was dealing with. This stuff is big and heavy, not like those little images you look at when shopping for it on the web. It's another thing to be said for experience, even shopping as a first timer is tricky, you haven't a clue what you are buying really and you get many varying opinions and advice from many folks which can help and hinder in equal quantity. (I'm not referring to this forum here btw).

So today, out with the grinder, out with the gloves, the epoxy, the this and the that. Hitting grp with a grinder loaded with a metal disk was some experience. It works great but you raise some amount of crap into the air and it's awful. It settles on your skin and you breathe some of it no matter how careful you are. As I am new to grp repairs, I decided I would tackle three areas on the bulkhead as they are mainly cosmetic and would give me some experience and a feel for the materials I am working with. I decided I would use a hard backing on the outside to hold the material (like a mould) and glass up from the inside. I ground a tapered edge outwards from the holes and then cleaned with acetone (that's some potent stuff right there). I then cut out backer boards from 5mm ply and lined these with cling film. I needed a release agent to prevent the resin sticking to the cling film so I chanced my arm and sprayed with silicone lubricant. It may work, it may not, either way, if it sticks, it should be easy enough to sand away bits of clingfilm after the repairs have cured up. Ideally I need some kind of wax spray as a release agent buy living near Boyle, you are seriously limited in what's available. There are only three things available in Boyle; Bread, sugar and milk. Anything else, and you have to go further afield to the likes of eh....Ballymote.

I then spent some time cutting out pieces from my glass cloth. Pieces should be cut and ready before you go mixing resin, cos once resin is catalyzed, you are on the clock. The way I went was to cut and place clear plastic on the ground out repair area and trace the outer shape. Then cut out that shape and transfer it to the glass cloth. Cut out a piece there and then cut out subsequent smaller pieces. I end up with 4 or 5 pieces of cloth each smaller than the last. When I resin up, I will lay the biggest piece down first, wet it up and repeat with each next smaller piece. As a typical novice, I went a bit heavy on the resin dabbing in more than necessary, if you back off a little and dab in less, the glass will soak up the resin underneath, just takes a little patience. By the time I was on my third repair, I was getting the hang of it.

Th resin was a big deal, getting out the containers and re-reading the many safety leaflets and what have you. By the time I was ready to pour my first batch of resin, I realised I had no container to mix it in, literally. You need small disposable containers for this. I searched the house and even asked next door, no one had any disposable cups. I needed petrol anyways so I went to my local shop, the filling station at Castlebaldwin. Now bear in mind that I have been going there for years and am well known to them. I went up to the woman of the house herself who was manning the counter, a woman I have met many times and chatted away with, I explained to her that I was mixing epoxy and needed disposable cups and asked her could I take a few of the paper cups from her coffee machine......You can she replied, and then informed me that they would be 25c each !!!! It made me feel real pissed off that! People wanna charge me for a few lousy paper cups. I paid her for 4 of the dam things. On my way out, I grabbed 5 and kept going - thus my opening headline! There's something wrong when you are treated like that by your neighbours. I used to be a good customer there, from now on I will do my level best to avoid the place. She can keep her fcuking cups.


1. Working on the trailer, this is the underside of the centrepiece. After removing all the rust and paint, look what I uncovered...It says "Pete O' Brian, 7/7/90". He must have been the trailer maker/welder. Another bit of the boats history uncovered. I love stuff like this.


2, Making backing boards for supporting grp repairs. I sprayed silicon lubricant as a release agent, lets see if it works.


3. I tape the boards to the outside of the repair, and wet out with glass from the other side.


4. Here I am cutting out pieces using 280g woven coving. I also ordered some 600g cloth but it's like an aran sweater. Really heavy, I might use it on the floor.


5. After wetting up several layers of glass and using a metal toothed roller to squeeze out any air, I'll leave these repairs overnight and see what the story is tomorrow. I'm told they cure after a few hours but that you need to leave epoxy for about 7 days to fully 100% cure.

Day 21

It was meant to be a nice simple day, do some filling, maybe a coat of paint on the trailer......but something unnerving was niggling at the back of my mind.

I have been looking at the remaining deck seat on the starboard for ages now. It's a wreck, really thin grp, full of cracks and the supporting timbers underneath are either broken or missing. So the seat is almost elastic. Now also bear in mind that it also restricts access to the deck floor right where I uncovered that awful patch repair. I have been thinking for a while that maybe the seat should go. I will build my own seat when the time comes, and I need to get at that floor. So instead of my nice quiet day; out came the recip saw. I cut away that bad boy and trimmed up the remainder with my Aldi dremmel.

Once the seat was out, I decided to have a closer look at the topside of the hull patch. There was delamination around the keel plate so I cut that away and revealed another soaked piece of wood. It was clear that this boat has a very dodgy hull. Time to get brave. I made the decision to pull up the delaminating material. Little did I know what I was about to uncover. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves but I will say that I was so shocked that I even made a video or two (links below).

After discovering a huge hole in the hull, and a perfectly rectangular man made hole at that, I knew that I was looking at rotten side keels. They too have to come out. Even crawling under the boat it's so obvious. The delamination around the side keels could only mean one thing. So again out with the dremmel and I cut away the grp covering from each keel. I then prized the keels down using a tyre iron. They dropped relatively easily actually.

Once I picked one of these keels up in my arms I knew that I had done the right thing just by the sheer weight due to the amount of water in them. They are saturated and in the early stages of rotting. Just seeing the keels reassured me that I had done the right thing. Leaving them as they were, I would have a boat with limited structural integrity, rotten keels and probably bad leaks. What I did today had to be done, I have been burying my head in the sand on these issues if I'm honest. I think today I have revealed how bad the boat truly is.

What I have now in the garden, is a boat with a whole new set of problems. I don't know if this boat is repairable now, I don't know if these keels and their replacement is beyond my skills or not. I am also worried that the main centre keel may be bad although there is no topside delamination along it's length to hint at this. Nonetheless it's a worry. I purchased this boat on the understanding that it had a good keel. It was a point that I covered with the seller more than once and he assured me it was good. At this stage I think I may drop him a line and initiate a little chat.


1. Should I stay or should I go. GTFO! This seat has to go. It's badly broken and it's supports are missing. It prevents me accessing the floor beneath where I need to investigate a rather bad botch hull repair.


2. Did you ever regret starting something? I can't believe how bad this is, surely it can't get any worse...can it?



3. Lets see how things look from the hull underside. If you look at the second frame in this image, you can see that I have unvovered a huge hole, and it's man made at that. Someone cut this out. What in gods name went on with this boat?


4. The keels have to come out. Time to face what I have been dreading for ages.


5. Keel timber is saturated and rotting. The timber is so wet that it weighs its weight in steel.


6. Just realised today that my humble Canon Powershot S2 does reasonable video.


7. See how bad these keels are

Simona1986 wrote: »

Likewise, LOLed when I heard your voice first, had a DNME voice in my head before I heard you spoke and the real one is gas. keep up the good work!

You should hear the language outa me, seriously!! Let me put it this way, my favourite word begins with c :cool:

Weather here is awful again, infact we only really got about a day and a half of sun from the recent "fine spell". It's back to wet, windy and bloody cold here. So boat is back under wraps and going by the weather forecast, it maybe there for a while. In the meantime, here's a very quick update.

1. Trailer frame. Stripped, wire brushed and left in the rain for 3 weeks to develope a new layer of rust. This gives the Hammerite "straight to rust" black paint a great key. I have found recently that Hammerite does not take terribly well to clean metal, thus the above experiment which worked a treat. Even the second coat was well keyed without any extra work.


2. When you are lying on the ground under a boat, you crawl out on your belly and there's your sidekick lookin in at ya. She's not much help but cheers me up no end. If only I could train her to make coffee.