Day 3

This is day 3 of my 10 day Grinder War of 2009. I have 10 days on the hard to fix everything that can't be done in the water... easily.

No before picture on that one...
Day 3... The saga continues...

So the weather report says today was my last sunny day.

I took advantage of it, and set up staging on the port side to recore the side deck.

Started up at 8 am, finished around 7:00pm... Cut off the top skin with a circular saw, snipped the edges it couldn't cut with a cut off wheel on the grinder. Peeled off the top skin. Pulled out the balsa, routed out the stuff under the lip. Fired up the Fein Multimaster with a scraping blade to get rid of the solid balsa at the aft end and under the edges.

Once that was done, I prepped the inner skin by grinding off all the old balsa remnants, and working sand paper under the lip on top and bottom. This is the most tedious part of the process... as you continually find another sliver of wood and have to resort to fishing a chisel or 5 in one tool under the edge to get the last of it...

Then I ground the bevel on the edge around the edge so that the new glass would have the same contour as the old deck, and there would be no hard spots to flex. I'm still on my original 36 grit flap disc... looks the same as when I started.

After that, I vacuumed everything and wiped down with acetone. I took out my sheets of end grain balsa coring, and cut them to fit with a fillet knife, notching the top by pushing down till the blade left an impression, then rotating the blade so it splits along the grain.

After that I cut my fiberglass to shape. 2 layers of 1708 biax, 8 feet long and 17 inches long at the wide end... but you have to start out with one almost two feet wide to follow the contour of the hull. I've never had luck starting with a straight cut piece and pulling it into shape... it always wants to bunch up somewhere or form a bubble that never wets out, so I make some scrap.

Then I cleared everything out, and started mixing pots of epoxy and cabosil filling the gap around the deck. I used a silicone spatula... sweeeet!

Once that was done I went back and took a chisel to any lumps that ended up anywhere so the balsa would lay flat.

I wet out the balsa with my cheapo 2 inch chip brush that I keep in a little bit of acetone... Gotta fill up all the joints in between blocks of balsa to get full strength and rot resistance. As each piece was wet out, I mixed up a pot of thickened epoxy with cabosil, and used a notched spreader to give some goop for the balsa to bed down in. I then went around with my fillet knife and trimmed any balsa that contacted the now filled gap...

More thickened epoxy went in around any gaps...

Then a layer of 1708... and another...

1 gallon and 11 hours on a 2 x 10 later... and she be done!

Zach