Search results

I decided that while I had the roof in the shop I would go ahead and prime it for painting later. I did final sanding with 320 grit sandpaper and then primed it with AlexSeal primer. The primer was thinned with the proper thinner and applied with the proper roller as per the AlexSeal directions...

Done. Well, except for sanding and fairing. The new sections consist of two layers of 1708 with additional layers at the edges and corners. Note that while the roof section of this hightop is 4" higher like the factory high top, it is longer than the factory hightop, meaning the front angle is a...

Masonite forms in place for laying up the corner gaps.

Front section has been laid up.

Front section has been laid up.

I used 1/8" smooth masonite to make a curved form to close the front of the roof.

I built a wooden cradle to hold the roof off my work table so I could work on it without distorting its shape.

Once the walls had been extended I reinstalled the roof top.

Once in my shop I cut the top of the roof off.

Done! Scary that this only took two minutes! Not enough time to change my mind...

I decided the best course of action for converting to a high top was to remove the roof and then do the modifications in my heated shop. Removal took about two minutes with a recipro saw with carbide blade.

I used smooth 1/4" masonite to make forms (forgot to take pictures) for the new sidewalls and applied one intial layer of 1708 fiberglass. Here I've added a temporary support to push the new sidewall into proper alignment while epoxy cures.

I'm hoping there is a way to reorder, but in the meantime I deleted the contents of the album and re-uploaded the images in reverse order. Basically the albums are loaded as a stack, so the most recent (last) addition is on top, and in this case the top is the first picture in line. If there is...

Here's what my transom looked lke after removing swim step, motor, and transducers. Existing holes were drilled out, any bad balsa core removed, then filled with thickened epoxy and glassed over.

My boat originally had a black plastic cap over the top of the transom. Part of it was missing and it was evident someone had done repairs to the transom top in the past. I decided to remove the remaining cap and the old repairs and see what I could find.

What a mess! How far does this go?

I grabbed a chisel and went to work. I found that someone had covered up rotted balsa (or maybe it was just wet at the time?) with some sort of white substance.

What I found was dry rotted balsa.

Eventually I got to balsa that was hard and solid.

In a couple places I had to dig deep to get to good balsa.