August 16, 2005

Here's the picture I received from the seller of the boat and trailer.. (Actually the cheap price was what sold me on the boat.)

Here is the photo of the 45 HP outboard I got from the seller this is tagged as a West Bend, but 1965 was the same year Chrysler bought out West Bend and they continued this model through. So a few months one way or the other and its a Chysler.

West Bend Outboard

Year 1965 Model 45521 Serial # 1106

3 1/8 bore x 2.75 stroke
42.18 Cu inch displacement
Weight 134 - 142 Lbs

Well, its not a starcraft thats for sure.. The seating in this boat is kind of interesting. 1st the driver & passenger seats are molded in fiberglass, you can see the back of the seats, its the blue part with the walk through opening in front of the pile of cushions. The rear seats are REAL interesting.. They are bench seats that face the CENTER of the boat. They are very low to the floor, like 4 to 6 inches. (they have got to go)

the major issue with this boat, until I find more problems when I open it up, is the rotted transom. This boat does not have a slash well, the transom is 1 1/2 inch thick plywood sandwiched between glass on the inside and out. And there is no top cap on the 'motor well'.

The reason the transom failed, is multiple, 1st the holes in it for OB mounting bolts, and ski tow rings, etc allowed water to leak. The HULL, the white part, and the DECK, the blue part, at the rear are not joined. There is a crack that leads directly to the wooden core of the transom on the outside of the boat where the hull and deck meet. The transom is also not tied into the deck so it can flex more that I would like, that opens up the hull deck joint and also....

The flexing HAS CRACKED THE HULL. in the lower corners of the boat at the extreme lower and outer edges of the transom the hull is cracked about 1 to 2 inches. That also allowed water up into the transom.

I'll post progress as I get started.

February 5, 2006

I finally got my other projects out of the way and boat is in the garage. This is a composite photo of the top edge of the transom. You can see the rot on the sides of the transom. The center is actually solid.

Both sides of the hull near the bottom of the transom are cracked like this and if the boat was left in the water, you can see how water made its way into the boat. I get to grind this down and repair the outside with glass and probably epoxy here, its a small job. I will use Polyester resin on all of the internal repairs.

There are plenty of holes in this transom. Plus the design is well, crazy. The white glass is the hull and the blue is the deck assembly. the plywood transom is ONLY behind the hull part of the boat. From the motor well in the center the plywood tapers down on either side and does NOT run up behind the deck. also the hull to deck joint at this point does not have a lip on it or over lap, they just butt up to one another. So any movement in the transom opens the joint up and water goes right into the top edge of the plywood.

All of this will get changed. The new transom will run up under the deck and the hull deck joint and it will be glassed over to seal ALL of this area. Also all mounting bolts, for the outboard, tow ropes, etc will run through tubing that is epoxied in place to seal the bolt hole away from the wood completely.

My stick figures didn't turn of real well, and the wife and kids refused to pose for me, so I'll try to explain the seating layout..

The 'driver' and passenger seats are molded in fiberglass, you can see the backs of them with the split in the center. These are very interesting because the seat backs are part of the deck molding. The seat bottom bench is a part of the hull molding and the backs are screwed to the bench seat.

The rear seating is just as interesting. It consists of two bench seats on the outsides of the boat facing the center. (one side in the photo has the cushions on it, the other doesn't so you can see the seat and its under lying structure.) We plan to remove all of the rear seating and replace it with something similar to this: (next Slide)

I don't remember where I got this photo from, but its a good explaination of what we are planning to do with the rear seating in our boat, minus the spash well that doesn't exist on my boat.

February 18, 2006

Since we know for sure we are removing these old rear seat bases, I selected this as the place to start my demolition. I also have more of a carpentry background, so I used my Sawzal with a long blade for the demo work instead of grinding out everything.. A lot less dust and mess this way.

Did I say this boat was cheaply built? Its VERY cheaply built. These seat bases were 1/4 inch pressed board with one layer of roven woving glassed over top of them. In the corners they used 1 x 1 1/2 lumber to strengthen the corners.

Here is a little better view of the construstion of these seat bases. Once I got them removed it seems that the designers used these to strenghten the hull. So I will be adding some stringers in here in place of these.

It took about 5 minutes to remove one entire seat base. All of the lumber in here is wet and totally rotten.

Someone 'Fixed' the rotted out floor right behind the drivers seat by sticking the tube from a can of spray foam under the floor and filling the entire area up with foam. That caused the floor to buldge up, and the hull to bulge down. The foam also leaked into the spaces under the seat bases. The base of this foam is wet and as part of repairs its coming out..

This is a photo looking toward the back of the boat from the drivers seat. the rear seat bases are to the right and left (the sawzall is setting in the space where the left seat used to be.

The plywood for the floor in this boat consists of at least three pieces that look like they were just pieced together. There is a 4 ft wide by about 1 ft long piece that runs across the boat right in front of the transom. There is a small depression in that piece of floor that I guess is the bilge, I have a better picture of that later.

Then the builders installed a 4 foot piece of plywood crossways between the rear seats that is about 2 feet wide. And finally the section that runs under the front seats is 4 foot wide and about 5 feet long. This is ALL getting replaced and re done.

The floor and 'bilge' layout in this boat is rather sad. The bilge is a 2 inch deep depression in the rear of the boat.

February 25, 2006

I have most of the junk cleaned out of the boat so you can see the stringers. This is a shot from the front seat looking to the rear with about a foot of floor left in place in front of the transom

Here's a close up of the 'bilge' rather inadequate. Part of the problem here is that the drain holes from under the floor are raised up above the surface about 1/2 inch. So unless you set this boat straight up you will NEVER get all of the water out from under the floor. This is getting changed, even if I have to leave the floor open at this point.

Also notice that someone tried to 'fix' the rotted floor on the right hand side by buying some spray foam and sticking the tube under the floor and emptying the can. What a mess and of course the foam is water logged.

Here is the front seat floor area with the floor removed.

We left the front floor section up under the bow alone, its is totally solid and we don't need to crawl in there to do any work.

When we removed the front floor section we found a wooden brace in here that was not glassed in and it basically fell out.

The bottom of the old floor looks to have been coated with Polyester resin W/O any mat or glass and you can see that it is peeling off of the wood. I need to save this piece of the floor as a pattern for the new floor section going in.

The circular cut out in the upper left of the photo is where the foam was injected and that area was SOOO rotted that I cut it out to make the removal easier.

I decided to glass over where that brace had been in the front to help protect the stringers. They are amazing solid considering the condition of everything else.

Since it is only at 40 degrees in my garage I applied some external heat to get the polyester resin to harden.

Well it has to happen at least once right? While I was trying to find the edge of the floor and grind it out I found the outside edge of the hull. I now have an 1/8 inch wide by 2 inch long hole in the hull. And of course its below the water line. I guess we'll be using a little Epoxy to fix this one.

February 26, 2006

It doesn't seen to make much sense to grind down, thinner, a place where there is already a hole in the hull, but thats what you do.

This is prep for Epoxying in several layers of cloth, the boat was built with at least two layers of roven woving and no cloth that I can detect.

I guess this lack of chopper gun fiber in the boat makes this a hand laid up boat. Wo HO, big deal, right. NOT!

Well its not easy to see, but there are three layers of clothe in that epoxy glob. I used 30 min hardner and that was Too slow for a 40 degree work area. Even with my flood light to add heat to it I had to slide the patch up off the bottom of the hull several times before it jelled and stayed in place..

But, this should be water tight. It is at the floor, hull joint, so there will be fairing compound on top of this and also several layers of cloth covering it.

More to remove of the rear seats. I had previously removed the seat bases, now I wanted to take out the backs, which where long extentions of the deck molding. The inside edge of the gunwale extended down and attached to the hull. I cut the gunway off straight and removed all of the extra stuff in the hull.

If you look closely, (you can click on the image to get the full sized picture), you can see how they finished off the inside of the hull deck seam. This boat uses a 'pount' seam or two small flanges that sit together. They actually glassed this entire joint on the inside of the boat. Here behind the seats they reached in behind the backs and smeared putty in the joint. Actually they got putty all over the place back here, More cleaning more grinding..

March 11, 2006

After a number of measurements we figured out that we could use 1 4 ft by 8 ft sheet of 1/2 inch A/C exterior plywood to replace almost the entire boat floor. The sheet will end 16 inches from the transom. That leaves a nice piece to install with the transom replacement.

Also at the Very rear of the floor the width is 50 inches so we will have to add a narrow strip to the one side.

To make the pattern, we cleaned everything up. We placed the old front floor section back in place and stapled card board to it as an extension. To hold the cardboard at the right height and give us a good working and writing surface we laid a scrap piece of 1/2 inch ply across the rear stringers.

Just in case the cardboard popped off of the plywood we added three 'witness' lines so we can reattach it in the same place.

The line between number 2 and 3 is our pattern line.

You make a tool. This wooden block is exactly 6 inches from the left edge to the pen point.

We held the left edge of the block again the inside of the hull and used it to draw a reference line on the cardboard that you saw in the previous photo.

Then we reversed the process when we transferred the pattern onto the sheet of plywood.

Here is the line our 'tool' drew on the cardboard.

You can also see that the cardboard does not run right up against the hull, we left a gap on purpose. This lets us work around obstacles that would prevent a tight fit at this point.

Not very water proof. Actually it makes a great full sized pattern. I had this old sheet of wall board hanging around. I think I bought it for $1 off of a scratch and dent pile at the Home Depot because it had edge damage.

It just worked out very well to make a full sized pattern before I cut into the plywood.

Part of the reason for using Wall board for a pattern is because it is soo each to shape. I trimmed the edges with a utility knife..

Once I was happy with the drywall based pattern, I transfered that to the sheet of 1/2 inch A/C exterior plywood and cut it out.. My sabersaw worked very well for this.

Of course you have to tilt the saw blade to cut the angle on the plywood so it kind of fits the hull angle where they meet.

Once again, the rear of the floor is 50 inches wide and plywood is only 48 inches wide. So we held the plywood to one side of the boat so the gap was only on the one side. We are adding a piece to the one side of the sheet of plywood to fill in the gap. The piece is about 3 inches wide at one end and over 18 inches long, so it tapers to nothing.

To attach the piece to the 4 x 8 sheet I turned back to carpentry again. This is a biscuit joiner setup. It cuts slots for 1/8 inch thick compressed wood ovals, "Biscuits", that are glued into the slots. The "biscuits" swell in the glue so they can hold the joint together and align the top surfaces perfectly. Thats why I choose to use it.

If you look closely at the grain you can see where the piece was added on. Now to install the floor

Yes, its PINK and it says Owens Corning Foamular on it. This is 2 inch thick building insulation. We use this stuff to insulate the OUTSIDE of concrete foundations. It is designed to be buried below ground in contact with dirt and water all of the time. Basicaly this stuff DOES NOT absorb moisture. You can read all about it at: http://www.owenscorning.com/around/insulation/products/foamular.asp

Because the gap under the floor is 2 inches in most places this 2 inch thick foam will fit nicely

The center channel is almost exactly 2 inches deep so installing the foam there was VERY easy. We did cut several grooves in the bottom side of this for water to pass to the bilge.

The side area are a little more fun. Because the hull curves up on either side, we had to measure for each piece and cut then to smaller and smaller thicknesses.

We tried to stand the foam on edge and draw a line where to cut it, but we wound up measuring and cutting the pieces on the bandsaw. Man does that bandsaw make nice work on this foam.. IT cuts a VERY narrow kerf and leaves a nice clean edge.

Even though we cut the foam back to try and conform to the developing V in the hull, we finally had to use the grinder to taper off the front edges of the foam in front of the passenger seat.

March 18, 2006

It dawned on me that once I get the floor in, I'll need to run glass clothe up the sides of the hull to help attach the floor to the boat. But those sides are not clean.

Now the grinder with 36 grit sanding disc's on it makes short work of things, until. I got to the front seat area where the carpet adhesive was soo think it loaded up the disc and we stopped sanding.

I switched to a wire brush wheeel on the grinder and got the glue out of the way and then with a new 36 grit disc we sanded it down.

All of that sanding and grinding makes a HUGE mess. Lots to vacuum up here.

These pleated vacuum filters are the best, and yes there is one under all of that stuff. But they can plug up when vacuuming up fine particles. (You should try vacuuming up drywall dust, that plugs up filters even faster)

But you can clean the filter quite easily. NEXT

Whatever you do DON'T WASH these filters, at least not on a regular basis.

All you need to do to clean them is to remove them from the motor. Tap the filter against the INSIDE of a garage can.. Tap and rotate, tap and rotate, Flip end for end, tap and rotate, tap and rotate and you will have a nice clean filter.

You actually WANT to leave the fine layer of dust on the filter, it helps collect finer particles than it would on its own. This filter is the same one from the previous photo and its back in the vacuum and running fine.

I took Jim Anderson's recommendations from the 'Runabout Renovation' book and treated my untreated plywood with wood preservative. Both sides got two coats.

I found that the easiest way to put this on was to pour it out on the plyood and just slosh it around with a spatula. I do not know why, but this water based formula would foam when I tried to use rollers or brushes on it. So other than some limited areas, edges, etc where brushes were absolutely necessary, I just poured it on. I used over 1/2 gallon for 1, 4 x8 foot sheet of plywood for 2 coats.

March 19, 2006

The foarm is all cut and installed. its 'tacked' down to the hull with construction advesive and the floor has been test fit MANY times so we think we are finally getting closer to installing this thing.

To help get the floor in the right place we made more witness lines. One for the center of the front of the boat and one for the center of the floor itself. We also marked where the stringers are at so we know there to put the screws.

With the floor centered at the rear, we measured from the floor edge to the inside of the hull on both sides and then we marked where the stringers were at the rear. That way we can put lines on the floor to follow when we screw the floor down.

Because we installed this plywood off to one side the rear edge is not parallel to the transom. Actualy we are going to trim the floor slightly so that we have exactly 16 inches from the inside of the transom to this joint. That will leave us a nice little section of floor to install once the transom is replaced.

Well we need layout lines so we know where the stringers are located. And, being a carpenter I grabbed the chalk box and snapped a couple of lines on the floor to go by.

The floor is installed. Its glued down over the foam and screwed to the stringers. The 2 x 4 cross piece in the picture is attached to the floor from the bottom to keep the floor straight while it is intalled. I used my finish nail gun and when I finally went to remove it the nail heads pulled through so I now have to patch 3 very small holes, I had thought the nails would stay and I could clip them off and leave them there. Actually it will work out better that they pulled through.

Polyurethane construction adhesive and 1 5/8 inch stainless steel screws. Construction adhesive, this type, is water proof. It bonds to just about anything and it will not eat away at the foam that we also glued to the plywood, so the foam should not rattle..

If you don't think this stuff can hold, here's my story.. While remodeling I attached a piece of 1/4 aluminum to a cement floor to hold a post in place. Several years later I wanted to move post and the plate, and I figured it would just pop off. I had to get under the plate with prybars and once it did come loose, it ripped the top layer of the cement off, the glue never did let go..

My plywood is bowed up a little on the outside edges. Why is it that the plywood couldn't bow down, towards the bad side of the panel instead of up toward the good side..

We added some braces under the gunnels to help hold it down in position until we get the edges puttied.

March 24, 2006

Well, we need to fill in the gaps along the edges of the floor where it meets the hull. I have been told to NOT use auto body filler because it can absorb water and help speed up the rot. So we created our own filler out of 1/4 inch chopped fiberglass strands, 3M micro balloons and resin.

I purchased all of my materials from US Composites: http://www.uscomposites.com/products.html

The mix started out as 1 part fibers, 2 parts balloons and 1 part resin.

The final mix is 2 parts resin, 4 parts balloons and 1 part glass fibers.

You can see the fibers in the mix. When the fibers came in the container they are all clumped together and the more you mix it and work it the 'hairier' it gets. Kind of like what they call 'kitty hair' filler

I had some concerns about this filler actually adhering to the wood floor and the existing fiberglass. So as you can see the joint had already been sanded down with 36 grit paper. I also wiped down the joint with Styrene.

Even though the joint "looks" clean, it is amazing how much gunk you get on the rag. I also catalyzed 2 ounces of resin and brushed it onto the edge of the plywood and also the fiberglass, hopefully to "wet" the edge so it will all stick together better. There is no way of knowing if the resin makes any difference or not. I am now ALWAYS wiping down with styrene, because it removes the last traces of dust that are still there even after vacuuming.

This filler mix had basically a peanut butter consistency and once I catalyzed it with MKEP I troweled it into the joint.

I left the braces in place and worked around them because I felt this filler basically would help hold the floor in place and it does.

The fiberglass fibers in this filler mix really helped prevent it from slumping or running out of the joint. But if I worked it too much, too many attempts to smooth it out, the fibers would work out of the joint and you get this hairy effect. More of a hastle than a structural problems because you have to grind them off after they set up.

Again we are working on the cheap here.. I had originally intended to use a NON fiberglass type of re-enforcement, but Vectra, or Polypropylene cloth's lost their luster when I bought 10 yards of 50 inch wide fiberglass F72 cloth for $30 delivered. At $3 a yard, I couldn't find anything that matched that price. These are ends of roll pieces, you can see what is available at: http://stores.ebay.com/Tordoff-Supply

Also Instead of buying glass tape or biaxial tape, I cut my own off of the bolt of cloth. I setup a work table, measured off 8 inch wide strips and with a straight edge and a razor blade carpeting knife I cut off 5 pieces to use around the hull floor joint. I have enough of this material that once I get the transom done and the floor sheated once. I may come back and do the floor joint once more time just for security sake.

April 7, 2006

We need to create a fillet between the floor and hull sides and also smooth up the 'hairy' filler we used. This is a 4 to 1 microballons to resin filler mix. It is Not as stiff as the filler with glass fibers. The recommendations I got were to not exceed the 4 to 1 ratio otherwise it would have too little resin in it.

My intent was to soften the joint between the floor and the hull side so the fiberglass clothe would not be so kinked when I installed it. To get a nice rounded shape I used a discarded CD as a squeegee.. It worked quite well.

The down side is that there was too much slump in the paste so it sagged and I didn't get exactly the curve I wanted. But the joint is much better than it was and it will provide a good transition for the fiberglass cloth

Here is another picture of the balloon paste in place this time the area in front of the front seat. The hull sides are much flatter here and the front where the floor ends is at a 45 degree angle to the floor so I tried to use the CD here and I didn't get as nice of results as I would like. More grinding.. (and yes I also used the balloon paste to fill in the screw head hole where we screwed the floor to the stringers.)

I bought these graduated 5 oz cups from US composites and they are great for measuring out resin for pastes, etc. But there is one draw back. The graduations are molded into the plastic, so they aren't that easy for these 45 year old eyes to see in the 1st place. But once you put resin in the cup the lines DISAPPEAR. I tried lots of different lighting sources, but could not make out the lines. So now before I use a cup I draw a line on the outside matching the marking for the amount I want to measure out. In this case 4 oz. This line does NOT disappear when I pour resin in the cup

The four oz amount is what I measured out for each piece of cloth 'tape' that I was installing.. I rolled up the 'tapes' and weighed them on my wife's kitchen / postage scale and they came out to be about 3 to 4 oz each. Based on cloth being wetted with about the same amount of resin, I measured out 4 oz and it was really close to what I needed.

Can you see it? The right hand photo shows the glass much better than you can see it in real life. When I added the resin this clothe turned invisible. So the wood stained floor coloring may show through after all, this could make for an interesting look for a boat.

I applied this cloth using what I guess is called the 'dry method' I laid the cloth in place where I wanted it and poured the resin on top of the cloth and then worked the resin in with a brush and the fiberglass roller. As the resin wetted out the fabric it turned clear..

Using the roller is kind of interesting. It is used to remove air bubbles from under the cloth. I had assumed because of the grooves in the roller it would bring the bubbles to the surface of the cloth. Instead it works like window film and it pushed the bubble to the edge of the cloth and then out.

So I FINALLY get to start on the repair that started all of this work. This is the wooden transom, what's left of it, after I removed the inside fiberglass layer.

The center part of this where the OB sits is nice and solid, the right and left upper sides are rotted so bad you can compress them with your finger and water comes up.

Getting this out of the boat was a challenge. The builders laid this boat up in a mold. They laid in one layer of roving and then installed the wood for the transom. Then they laid in SEVERAL more layers of woving on the inside of the boat. That along with the filler around the edges of the transom actually puts the wood in a groove, or notch in the boat. I could not pull it out in one piece. I cut the center section out, then I could grab the two side pieces and pull them up and out. I'll reassemble the pieces to use as a pattern for the new transom.

Now that I have all of the wood out of the way I get to clean this all up for a new transom.. Lots of grinding and sanding needed, plus holes to fill, etc.

April 11, 2006

Here is a look at the ends of the stringers, that DON'T attach to the transom. Thats going to get fixed. And that nice groove the transom sets in. I guess if you could have somehow pulled the entire transom straight up you might has gotten it out. But with all of the filler around it I couldn't get it to budge even with pry bars.

The way the builders put the hull transom joint together at the back of the boat is what caused the leaks and the rot. The white in the photo is the hull moulding, The blue is the deck moulding. On the sides of the boat this joint ends in a 'pount' or flange and is also filled on the inside. Here at the transom the two pieces just sit there. With a gap between them. Someone had caulked the seams and I assume there was some kind of trim piece over this.

I will be glassing this together on the inside with a couple of layers of cloth. I will also be running the wooden transom up behind the deck molding as well. Once the inside joint is complete, we'll grind down this outside glass and join the two pieces of the boat with a couple of layes of cloth here as well.

We're repainting the boat anyway so we can cover this repair quite easily.

The gap you see between the hull and deck is not exaggerated, the gap is really 3/16 to 1/4 of an inch wide when everything is setting as the manufacturer intended.

This is where the top of the transom met the deck. There is a wad or glob of poly filler that is 1 1/2 inches thick tapered back to the deck and covered with roven woving.

There was no way I was going to grind all of this out, I would have been here for YEARS and the dust!.. So I propped the deck up and got the sawzall. I didn't get all of it, but I was able to cut the majority out so I could grind down that last bit of filler.

April 12, 2006

Yes, there are a few holes in the outer fiberglass on the transom. There are even some holes that have previous been filled when the boat was repainted.

Also taped up / over the hull cracks on either side before I filled them.

Yes, that is a dremel in the picture and I used it to do the cleanup for this repair. The area I was trying to get into was too difficult to use the 4 1/2 inch grinder and the Dremel worked extremely well at cleaning this up and I had alot of control of what was going on.

I had ordered some 'thick' epoxy from US composites for this type of repair work. But I didn't order pumps because they are messy and I wasn't going to be mixing that much epoxy at one time.

So I am using a couple of syringes, each one marked so I don't get them mixed up. I can get a package of 3 of these at the local 'Farm' store for $1. I don't know if or what you have in your area that supplies Horse owners, but our store has all kinds of these syringes CHEAP.

April 13, 2005

So I put two layers of cloth in this repair, one layer of a 10 oz clothe from a 'bondo' kit and one layer of the 7 oz clothe that I got on eBay. Even though this epoxy is described as thick and the resin part is VERY thick, it wetted out the cloth without any difficulty. I used a 'solder paste' brush to mix the 'poxy and also to wet out the clothe. I didn't need the fiberglass roller for this small repair.

The while stuff in the picture is epoxy that I thicken with microballoons to fill the holes in the outside skin. Even thickened it sagged and ran all over the place.. After about 30 minutes it started to jell so I pushed it back into the holes and it stayed. Some of it of course got in with the fix..

Here are some of the holes in the transom that I patched, you can also see where the thickened epoxy sagged and ran..

April 18, 2006

We started to straighten and brace the transom so we could make an accurate pattern of the area as well as start to fill in that hull to deck gap. After looking around the scrap pile for plywood to brace the outside of the transom I found this piece that was once part of a book case. We shoved the boat forward on the bunks so we could rest this plywood on the bunks.

Once we started to clamp things up we figured out that the bowed gunwalwes were a part of or contributed to the outward bow in the deck moulding at the transom.

We clamped 2 x 4's to the gunwales to help straighten them and we also put a spreader in between the gunwales to force them out. This also tightened up the fiberglass skin at the rear of the boat. Finally we clamped the outside plywood to the uprights on the trailer to pull the transom into alignment.

Even with a 2 x 4 clamped to it this gunwale is not straight. We are debating about how to correct this. Because there is no wood inside these gunwales, we have considered installing some type of 2 by lumber up under the gunwales, but we are not sure we can straighten them out.

Would heating this with a heater or heat gun make it pliable again?

We have started the process of reinforcing the hull to deck joint at the transom. With this area clamped straight, we put one layer of our 'hairy' filler in here and some looking around seems to show that we need one more layer of filler in here to make this flat and then we'll add a layer of mat and one layer of cloth before we put the wood in place..

I removed the old transom as three pieces, so we reassembled what is left of the transom to make a pattern. The ruler at the top is there to help re-align all of the pieces, because there isn't that much left to work with.

Since we removed this last week, this has dried out and some parts of it are like dried leaves, it will just crumble in your hand..

We placed this on a large sheet of cardboard that we are using as a pattern. We traced as much of the shape as possible on to the cardboard

Once the old transom shape was transfered to the plywood we meaured and extended the top line so the new transom will run up under the deck molding. Of course this is going to require trimming, to get an exact fit.

We had to add onto our orginal pattern to get a good working one, but a little masking tape and some more cardboard and staples and we are good to go..

In order to get the new enlarged transom up under the deck and swing it into place we need to trim back the stringers. They don't attach to the transom anyway, and we will be strengthing this area as well

This is another picture I got off the net, but it helps illustrate how we will brace the transom to the stringers. The one question is how we will fit this along with the floor and the ski pylon all together.

Stay tuned...

OK, I have been accused of 'dumpster diving' before, but I got this BEFORE it got to the curb.

We were doing the spring cleanup, and my wife says to me; "Take that old porch swing that we don't use and throw it out." As I am carrying this out to the curb, it dawns on me that this is about 4 feet wide and it looks a whole lot like what I had envisioned for a rear bench seat. Of course it needs some repair work and some stain or paint, but we can make this work..

April 22, 2006
After some test fittings with the cardboard pattern we determined that this groove in the floor just has to go. There is no way we can accurately pattern the transom if it has to drop down into the groove and also we'll never get it out of the boat, if it drops down into there. So we filled it in with our 'hairy' filler.

We put a second coat of filler on the hull to deck joint and to not over work it and have it all over we kind of troweled it on.. This of course results in having to grind it down more.. but that went quickly.

We are happy with our cardboard pattern, so we are going to transfer that to the 3/4 inch plywood. Some math is involved because all transoms are angled about 14 to 15 degrees from vertical. So, where the wooden transom meets the floor needs to be angled as well and it must follow the curve of the floor. This is a picture of us comparing the angle we had set on the circular saw with the angle on the OLD transom. (Glad I kept that around for another week, before I threw it away.)

Here are both pieces of the new transom screwed together temporarily so we can check the fit. It took several hours to get the 1st piece sized right. Because we want a nice close / tight fit in the boat, we actually cut the 1st piece of plywood oversized and sanded it down gradually with the belt sander until we had a nice fit. Then all we had to do was transfer that shape to the second piece of plywood.

Some of what complicated our measurements was accounting for the 14 degree transom angle. Being that the cardboard pattern is thin, it fits back up against the inside of the rear of the boat and it does not reflect the front edge of the plywood that is 3/4 of an inch in front of it and Longer because of the transom angle. We over compensated the length to account for the angle and wound up sanding alot of that off.

These marks on the transom are here to help us get the floor finished off. The rear edge of the floor needs to rest on something. Because there are no cross frames in this boat, we will have to add blocks of wood in front of the transom to support the floor. We also marked out the location of the stringers in case we need to add blocking for the transom to stringer knee braces.

April 26, 2006
Since this plywood is not perfect, we thought we should fill the voids with epoxy to strength and seal the inside. Well.. This turned into quite the MESS. First off some of the voids ran all the way through the panel so after we had poured in the epoxy it started to run out of the bottom. No problem there's always duck tape. Well the duck tape wouldn't hold it. We tried clamping a board on the edge and that leaked as well. We finally mixed up some filler quite hot so it would set in a minute of two, and we plugged the holes on the bottom. We had left the two panels tacked together because we had been doing test fittings and soon realized that if we didn't take them apart we wouldn't be laminating them later.

Its good that we took them apart. The next morning we found that the epoxy has oozed out of the side of the panels where several voids where and this would have 'poxied the panels together permanently.. We would now suggest that you hold off filling voids until you have both panels laminated together and if your transom repair is open on the top, hold off on filling voids until after you put the wood in the boat..

We are using poly resin and one layer of cloth to laminate the two panels for the transom together. Jim Anderson's recommendation in Runabout Renovation is to use lots of screws and we did. Unlike Norm Abrahams, someone did not GIVE ME thousands of dollars worth of clamps, so we clamped one section tight and then screwed it together (Contrary to popular myth, screws WILL NOT PULL lumber together, unless you drill a clearance hole in the 1st layer of material.)

we kept moving the clamps around the job and followed with the screws to hold it together. There is one screw about every 6 inches.

we did previously cut the clothe to approximate size, and we left the sides a little long so we wouldn't run short. Once the resin setup we cut off the large portions with a utility knife and ground the edges smooth. We also ground off the resin drips

Because our plywood was bowed, we needed to hold it flat while the lamination was setting up. We attached two straight 2 x 4's to the first layer with finish nails, just like we did to keep the floor flat. Now that the resin is setup we can pry these off and again the nail heads pulled through the plywood, so no steel is left to worry about.

Also, since our stainless steel screws are 1 5/8 inch long and 2 pieces of "3/4" (actually 23/32 inch thick) plywood is only 1 1/2 inches we have the points of screws sticking through. Five minutes with the grinder and we had those all cleaned up.

Now that we have this all laminated and before we put it in the boat for the last time we sealed the top edge of the plywood with epoxy, (with the way this sticks up under the deck, we're not sure we can get it glassed in well, so we want to seal it now just in case.)

May 05, 2006

Sorry for not having any during pictures, but this was a hurry and get it all in there before the resin starts to jell job.

Because the hull behind the lower part of the transom is less than 2 layers of Roven Woving and its thinner than the deck I added 2 layers of mat and 1 layer of cloth behind the transom before the wood was installed.

Actually I sized the 1st layer of mat to only cover the hull and glassed it in. No need for the fiberglass roller here and you use a short brush to dab or pat the resin on and into the mat.

Next we installed a layer of 7.5 oz cloth, same as we used for the floor. the cloth runs up under the deck moulding and ties everything together. We also left a flap in the motor well area so we could glass over top of the transom once it was installed. (More on that later)

Then we installed the 2nd layer of mat. We coated the back side of the wood transom with resin and stuck it in place. Clamping it in place is kind of interesting.

I used about every clamp I own on this job. We started by setting the transom as close to in place as possible. We used a rubber mallet to make sure the bottom was back in place before we started clamping.

We tapped one side into place, then put a bar clamp in 'spreader' mode between the edge of the floor and the transom to push it back and hold it in place. Then we tapped / smacked the other side of the transom back into place and put a second clamp over there.

To pull the top and everything together we used the piece of plywood on the outside (with wax paper in between to keep it from sticking) and clamped the top edge with regular bar clamps and long reach clamps. This pulled it all together and over time we started to get some resin oozing out of the top edge of the motor well

We had left the layer of cloth long so we could pull it forward and over the top of the motor well to cover and encase that edge of the transom.. But with the clamps sliding around and resin oozing up from below, it didn't work out the way we planned. This is probably going to get ground down because it sticks up in several places..

May 6, 2006

Well, this is the mess that I got out of my attempt to glass over the top of the transom at the motor well at the same time as I installed the transom.. Lots of buckling in the glass and I have to grind probably 50% of this off. So I will run a layer up and over from the inside once I get to that point

Now that the transom is in and solid, we can glass over this hull - deck joint on the outside to seal up that side of the transom. We have ground off the multiple layers of paint and just through the old gelcote. The hull moulding is not real thick at this point and I don't want to grind through it.

We vacuumed and wiped down with styrene before we applied resin and 2 layers of 7.5 oz clothe to the outside of the joint. This is the first time we have needed finishing resin, all of our other work will be glassed over again. So after we applied the resin and glass, we added finishing wax to the resin that was left (already catalyzed) and brushed on a coat of that. It all cured tack free very nicely.

On this vertical surface we used the 'wet' method to install the clothe. The resin we had painted on the area helped hold the clothe in place while we brushed on the remainder of the resin. There is a 2 inch wide piece of clothe and then a 4 inch wide piece of clothe in the joint.

Even though the air temperature was 70 and the resin was mixed at 1% we still had some runs and drips to get rid of. We sanded down the high spots with our electric random orbit sander and we will put some bondo on this to smooth it up for the paint job later.

Here goes the last of our 'hairy' filler. There were some small gaps between the hull and the transom so we troweled filler in them and then used a thin screwdriver to pack the filler all the way to the back of the joint. Once we we happy with all of the spaces being filled in we started to build up fillets between the transom and the hull. Once we grind this down and smooth it out a little we will glass over this joint with tape, and finally when we glass in the floor, we'll glass over this once more too..

To support the rear edge of the floor at the transom we cut these blocks out of some old CCA type pressure treat that we had laying around. Since this is CCA treated we don't have to worry about it corroding fasteners like the new AC2 stuff does.

We choose this material because its made from Southern Yellow Pine and is very strong. So it will handle a number of screws in it and it also helps to seal the transom edge to the hull.

We have reference lines on the transom of where the blocks go and where the floor will sit on top of them so we put these in the right place.

Because the transom is angled 15 degrees (they all are), we had to cut the top edge at 15 degrees. We also had to tilt the table of the bandsaw when we cut the lower edge curve so it is also at 15 degrees.

We are glassing and screwing these in.

So we could get these blocks into the same place once we had the mat in place, etc, we started all of the screws into the transom. Then we backed them out for the install.

We put one layer of mat under and behind these blocks and screwed them into position squeezing some resin out from behind and underneath them. So we know we have this edge sealed.

Before the install we sealed the ends of the blocks with 'poxy so they won't soak up water.

Because the rear bench seat will not come this far back and we cut the stringers short to get the transom in the boat, we are adding these transom to floor & stringer braces. These are 3/4 ply that has been 'poxy sealed on all edges. The notch in the lower left is so water can pass from the side chambers under the floor into this, the bilge. We also made these notches high enough that any water that is on top of the floor can also run down into the bilge at the rear of the boat as well.

We will also be attaching the ski pylon to these braces, so we are using 3 - 1/4 inch bolts with large fender washers, to attach each brace to the stringers. We will also be glassing these over and attaching them to the transom and floor as well.

Both braces are cut, and installed. As I was bolting this up it dawned on me that I needed to glass these before I put in the bolts. Because, I don't want to glass over the bolts and nuts.

Now that I have the glass in place, I'll drill out the holes through the glass and install the bolts for the last time.

Here is a picture and descriptions of all of the structures and framing in the rear of the boat. You can see where the stringers were trimmed off and how the braces attach.

Our plan is to install the Ski Pylon pole that we snagged off Ebay in the boat. We wanted something substantial to attach it to. So we extended the three bolts on each side so they pass through: the stringer, the Transom Braces and the Aluminum Angle.

Here is a picture looking down from the transom at the braces. We aligned the tops of these so they are flush with the floor. So, IF we have to mount the pole further ahead, we can attach braces to these and run them out over top of the floor.

We again made a pattern for these floor sections out of cardboard and also measured them out before we cut them. They are supported on three sides: The front, where it meets the existing floor, is on blocking that is screwed to the bottom of the existing floor. The inboard side is setting on the stringer. The rear is setting on those floor support blocks we added to the transon.

The outboard edge gets filled and glass taped to the hull. The other side is exactly the same. We did leave the center section between our transom braces open for now. We may add a cover at a latter date.

July 3, 2006
We have been terribly remiss in updating this project file in the push to make the June 10th vacation date, but we made it BARELY.

I was rebuilding the Lower Unit of the outboard at 10 am on the day before we were to leave on vacation.

Here is a picture of me and the girls headed out on the lake to do some more tubing. We ran the boat and OB for 6 days straight with no problems. We have LOTS of things we want to update, like loosing that ridiculous rear bench seat and steering changes, but she did the job.

Oh, by the way, other than the drain plug, there are ZERO, count them 0 holes drilled in my transom. We still have it settle on a final motor placement and drill the bolt holes for it, but because we have the ski pylon we did not have to put holes in my nicely repaired transom for tow hooks, etc.

Once we get a speedometer, we'll cement the pickup for it on instead of screwing it on.

Just to back track and update some of the project information. We will get some shots of the floor, once we clear all of the mess out of the boat from vacation. One thing we could get to was the ski pylon mount, here is the finished base for the pylon. and yes, that is a 1 inch galvanized pipe flange with a short section of pipe in it. Again, we bought the pylon used, without mounting hardware, so we had to make our own mounts. That flange is bolted to a 1 inch by 6 inch piece of OLD treated southern yellow pine with 4 - 1/4 inch stainless bolts, fender washers and lock nuts.

The board is bolted to the 2 inch angle braces we installed with 4 - 1/4 inch stainless bolts and the angle is bolted the stringers and transom braces.

We had to cement a PVC pipe over the steel pipe nipple to make it correct size to fit inside of the ski pylon pole. We also had to cross drill the PVC and the pipe nipple for the locking pin that holds the pole in place.

Here is the pole installed on the base.

This part took some engineering. The original brace arms for the pole where almost twice as long as we wanted and they had ends on them that were machined to fit over ball joints, that we don't have. After much measuring and checking and measuring and buying a set of digital calipers, we finally figured out that the ID of the tube used originally is the same as 3/4 inch water pipe.

We didn't want to cut up the original braces, in case we wanted to move this further forward in the boat, and also if we ever move this to another boat, we'll have the original arms to work with .

So, we cut some 3/4 inch galvanized water pipe to the proper length. We reamed out the holes to 27/32 with a drill, thank you Enco for cheap drill bits. We installed the original upper mounting blocks into our new pipes, cross drilled properly for the compression pins.

On the lower end, we had wanted to K.I.S.S. so we installed a 3/8 inch bolt vertically up through the deck for a rod / ball end to attach to. Actually the bolt is not running perfectly vertical, its more like square to the deck face at this point. Too much to explain, but we lined it up so we could get the rod end to slip over the bolt nicely and then we put a wing nut on it.

We thought that the major forces of the brace arms should be transfered to the transom, so we dug through the scrap wood pile looking for a suitable block to use under the hull and against the transom. We had left a gap at the top between the transom and the underside of the deck that we needed to bridge. We settled on an OLD treated 4 x4 that we ripped in half on the bandsaw, that left us with 2 blocks 1 3/4 by 3 1/2 that are glued and screwed to the transom and also to the deck.

There is a 10 inch 3/8 carriage bolt that runs up at an angle and comes out the top of the deck for the braces to attach to. We hold the bolt in place with a fender washer and locking nut.

When the pylon in installed it drops down on top of this bolt against the locking nut and held in place with a wing nut

We had the kids tubing, skiing and wake boarding behind the boat all week, the pylon did not budge. This is my 6 ft 2 inch tall, 150 lbs son on the tube, we don't have any photos of my 200+ lbs brother in-law because we was the one taking pictures. This is 1 part of the boat design I am VERY happy with. It works SOOO well to have the tow point for the line 3 feet above the water.

I could corner hard and whip the kids out to one side of the boat and never worry about the rope in the prop, etc.

US Composites B440 lay-up resin is the product on the left that we ordered 2 gallons of originally. Our estimates were running at right at 2 gallons of resin plus or minus a little for the project. The US composites resin is a layup resin and it is not waxed, so if we use it for a final coat we need to add wax to the resin when we mix in the MKEP, and we have done that for small batches with no problems..

We did the entire floor install, made putties, did the taping as well as the transom lamination and install with this resin. We also put down the 1st layer of 7 oz glass clothe over the entire floor with this resin. B440 is very easy to work with. It has a nice wet out and consistent SLOW setting. We installed the 1st layer of cloth on the floor as 2 - 50 inch wide panels that ran across the boat and had a seam running across the boat right behind the driver’s seat.

We had 0 – ZERO problems wetting out and laying the 1st layer of glass. No bubbles, no wrinkles. The wood grain showed through the cloth and resin beautifully. We still had time after the entire layer was done to do some minor tweaking of the clothe before it totally setup.

So, the plan was that we were to finish off the floor with a 2nd layer of the same cloth running from the back of the boat up to the front of the boat. Because this was to be our final layer we needed a finishing resin, a waxed resin, or we needed to add wax to the USC resin.

Well we didn’t have enough of the USC resin left to do the entire job and we had some things to finish on the transom, so lets hold on to the remaining resin and do get ourselves some finishing resin.

Wholla, product 2 on the right in the photo is purchased (we are purposely NOT naming the product because we are so PISSED about the quality of the product, and we don’t want to get in a lawsuit)

This resin is a waxed finishing resin and all indications are that you catalyze and use it exactly like the previous USC resin. WRONG !!!.. Absolutely, totally DEAD WRONG.

We mixed the 1st pint batch of this resin at 1% MKEP like all of the other batches of USC resin that we had mixed. First off the wet out was problematic and we needed allot more time to work the resin into the cloth, this resin was NOTICEABLY thicker than the USC resin and it didn’t wet out as easily. 2nd about ½ of our 1st batch of resin setup in the pot before we could use it, like in under 10 minutes.. Keep in mind that we had USC resin catalyzed at the exact same rate that took 30 minutes to jell. (We are operating in early June, at maybe 65 to 70 degree temperatures)

So we start mixing batches at ¾% MKEP and finally wound up thinning the resin 10% with styrene and mixing at ½% MKEP and it STILL setup in the pot.

We went from one layer of cloth that looked nearly perfect to a ‘finish’ layer of cloth that looked like a 10 year old had laid it. Obviously we are not the least bit happy about this situation. We were working towards that being our final layer of cloth on the floor and not having to go back and glass it again.

Now we get to grind down the ENTIRE floor, get more cloth and more, USC resin this time, and cover the entire floor with a 3rd layer of glass.

So, my recommendations:

1. Buy your resins from a resin supplier, like USC, not from the auto parts store.


2. Always do jell time tests on resins before you use them.
3. Always do jell time tests on resins before you use them.
4. Always do jell time tests on resins before you use them.

This is what part of the floor looks like AFTER the 2nd layer of glass and resin problems. We get to grind all of this down and cover it again

In preparation for installing some new seats in the rear of the boat, we have ground down part of the floor in preparation for glassing it again.