Additional holes needed to be drilled, radiating out from the rotten hole to determine the extent of the damage. I could have drilled smaller holes, but I wanted a really good look to make sure that the rot had not spread. The balsa surrounding the center hole was soggy, but not yet rotten.

Here is the major damage. This is too big of an area to fix by just cleaning out the holes. I can get an idea of the area based on the pattern of the "black holes." The second hole from the left (against the chine) is also black, and there was another single bad one on the starboard side. One good thing, since I had the seat boxes and V berth posts out, I put in a permanent 23 gallon gas tank (visible under the berth). I'll start another album for that.

Here are the homemade clean out tools. Bent nails. I start with the smallest bend in a drill that has a clutch and work my way up, if needed. When I hit solid wood, the clutch slips or the nail bends. I go on a little further to make sure that I have gotten all the rotten wood. This does not mean that I have come to dry wood!

This is a good picture of the most extensive damage. The dark holes on the port side indicate rotten wood where the seat box pop rivets leaked the most. I have left the swarf from the drilled out rivet holes on the starboard helm seat. You can see by the color of the swarf that the wood is good and gets better towards the bow. The V berth support posts were also removed (both good, but need reinforcement because of my new permanent gas tank).

Additional holes needed to be drilled, radiating out from the rotten hole to determine the extent of the damage. I could have drilled smaller holes, but I wanted a really good look to make sure that the rot had not spread. The balsa surrounding the center hole was soggy, but not yet rotten.

Here's the wet swarf from a bad hole, even though the boat had been in the garage for several months. All of this had to be dug out and then the hole dried out.

Going aft, you can see the change on a rotten fastening. The pop rivet holes on both sides were okay.

For some rivets, I had to drill down and then pull out the remains of the rivet. This balsa seems okay even though the adjacent test hole was discolored.

M

Additional holes needed to be drilled, radiating out from the rotten hole to determine the extent of the damage. I could have drilled smaller holes, but I wanted a really good look to make sure that the rot had not spread. The balsa surrounding the center hole was soggy, but not yet rotten.

Marco Flamingo
Oct 2, 2015

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