Major surgery time! I had debated on doing this, but I had to. Ive invested too much time to just give up on her. Two weeks ago she was on the lake, now she sits in dry dock with 20 ribs cut out ready to be replaced and a new sub deck and weather deck being cut for her.
Point of no return, that’s for sure. I think it’ll be worth it though. I fixed the ribs and made it easier to skin.
And...... due to the scratch build nature of the keel, there are ribs that do not line up properly. I figured I would be off by a tiny bit on a few but there are some that are off by ¼” and I cannot correct for that. Not entirely sure how that happened. Actually, it probably happened from printing off the plans for the keel and not taping the sections together at the correct spot.
Ahh I figured out what happened. I updated the ribs but forgot to modify the subdeck and top deck to match the new shape. I will get that fixed up.
Sadly, it was as I feared. The old hull is off by ½” overall from the planset. The first 4 ribs line up and then they slowly start drifting off of alignment. So, I think I will cut new ones to match and try to salvage some of the better ribs from the old hull (it never tracked straight in the water and would plow under at anything over 50% throttle so the hull was woefully bad anyway). Thankfully now that the CnC is running, it takes no time to cut stuff. Just a matter of buying more stock. Ive already made modifications to the plans for the correct hull shape in the stern as well as extended the outboard prop skegs. The saga continues.
Most definitely. It wont take long to have the hull rebuilt though. Having the CNC really makes that go a lot faster. I’m going to battle the hull so it needed modified to meet the rules anyway. Plus the prop shaft tunnel was leaking no matter how much I gooped it with epoxy. That fall off the deck really did a number on it.
Not much to update. As I was deconstructing the previous hull a lot of its problems became obvious. The fiberglass peeled off the bottom like an orange peel. There were a few spots where the fiberglass resin didnt cure! I imagine it was the reaction between some of the epoxy glue as Ive read that fiberglass/polyester resin and epoxy resins do not play well together. The wood filler epoxy most likely also contributed since it’s solvent based and some of the uncured areas were touching the filler. Have to get more ply. It should be here on Friday. I had just enough scrap from the old build to cut a new keel. And one last sheet of ply so a few new ribs were also cut. All of the joints are finger joints and dry fit, they hold together very well. I might just be back on the water by next weekend (doubtful.. but maybe..?)
