Search results

Well, It’s been forever it seems but I am finally making headway. When I ordered my balsa I was told it would be about 5 weeks before it arrived in Homer and then it would be mailed on to me. It took a bit longer than that, but I used the time to sand and get ready…and procrastinate. When the...

Hey Eric, I sooooo feel your pain. I would recommend, since you are in Ninilchick, that you get in touch with Eric Sloth in Homer. I'll put his contact info at the end. He is a boatbuilder and ordered the 1.5" balsa that I need to re-core my boat. It is only sold in large lots so I couldn't...

Once again, thank you for the resources. I will look them all over carefully. The reason I said I wanted to put layers down under the balsa was because of something you said when I first posted about this in April. That thread was called something like cracks around seat boxes and v-berth...

Thanks for the link Teufelshunde. I just watched his series as well as others pertaining to core replacement. It is easy to fall down the YouTube rabbit hole! Fishcather907, I looked at TotalBoat and those seem to be mostly wooden boats? I haven't searched through all of them yet, but...

Thank you, Bob, that is very helpful and leads to a couple of questions. I wanted to lay in the layers of mat and 1708 against the hull maybe several days before putting in the core. I don't know how much cure time there is between layers, but I assume there is some and that it is okay to get...

Bob, I haven't ordered anything except the thicker balsa. I've been pouring over other posts on the forums looking for what others have done and trying to educate my self a bit about fiberglass. (I'm not doing so well!). I'm a bit confused about the differences between mat, cloth, 1708 and when...

Thanks, Teufelshunde! That is good info. Because it is such a sharp bend to conform to the bow, which leaves a really wide kerf opening, I was thinking of getting two sheets of the 3/4 inch and layering them up there to reduce the bend. But I don't want to do the whole job in 3/4 inch since...

Thank you for the encouragement, Bob. I am definitely acquiring tools doing this job! Not complaining about that; I like tools and will now be adding an angle grinder to my repertoire! I rather figured that is what I needed. In another post, you had recommended that I lay a layer of mat...

Well, I have cut all I'm going to and am finally ready to order supplies and get to rebuilding! While I'm waiting though, I know I have a lot of clean up and preparation. The bottom of the boat has pink fiberglass areas interspersed with smooth black (rottenish?) areas that can be a bit...

This is the limit of my forward cut and I\'m having the same problem/question. You can see from the shadows that it is very uneven

This is where I removed the v-berth bunk and will have to replace it someday. Do I grind everything back at a 12:1 ratio to prepare for that?

This shows the various ways the floor looks: nice pink smooth fiberglass, icky black fiberglass, areas of fuzzy mat and a lot of unevenness. How much sanding do I need to do to get it ready for new mat?

Along the sidewall I ran into filler where the balsa core met the wall. You can see a lot of air pockets and thick epoxy. How smooth does this need to get?

Teufel, please keep me informed on the Colorado supplier when you find out the cost. I contacted CoreLite and their 1.5" only comes in rigid sheets. I'm thinking Bob's suggestion of two layers of 3/4 inch might work best for me as I have a pretty good curve to fill in the bow. The wide...

Teufelshunde, I so feel your pain. At least you found the edges - everytime I cut further I uncover a big area of water. Soon I'll have everything removed! I also have a 1.5 inch core and found that a product called CoreLite comes in thicknesses up to 4 inches. I haven't priced it. It's in...

Today I decided to expand the cut toward the stern to chase down the dark mushy line toward the outside. My moisture meter wasn't maxing out, but I knew rot was following the line. I cut back about 4 inches and as soon as I stuck my wonder bar in and gave it a tug, water just oozed up...

The dotted line is where I left off. I had one little black line to follow back and thought the rest looked pretty good. Once I cut in it was full of water back there. The smooth areas are where the balsa was not adhered to the floor at all.

Another update. I have removed an enormous amount of the core. I had to take out the v-berth bunk in order to get underneath. Not fun. Drilling to test areas proved unreliable because the kerfs in the balsa core allowed water to run fore to aft and side to side willy-nilly. As I expanded my...

This is in the bow. You cansee the balsa looks good, but it is not adhered to the bottom and moisture trickled out.

Front view after removing the wet areas and cutting out the un-adhered area. Note the wide kerfs. These are what the water followed up. One on the right is filled with nearly 1/2 inch fiberglass.