786 Rebuild finially Begins

[joneurope]

Greetings fellow Mothists.

With a new job, and weekends finially free; I have began the overhaul on 786.

She's one of the 78# Series of boats that Brian Skinner built (I believe in the late 80's/early 90's).

Shes going to be stripped back to wood top and bottom, double floored (Effectivly- Will keep within rules of max floor thickness), then re-varnished, repainted and re-fitted. Ive got hold of a fairly bendy Phantom Carbon mast (Stiff by moth standards) that I have repaired and altered to fit. Ill be sheathing the ply centreboard (Nice shape) and installing a much needed Self Bailer.

Thanks to some friendly advice from John Claridge, I'll be laminating some new gunwhales, which could go one of two ways :/ (Although I have a good friend whos great with wood helping out aswell).

She has currently had the deck stripped, old tatty gunwhales removed, and had the first dosing of oxalic acid to remove some unsightly water marks. Whilst the boat is never going to look like The Painted Lady, or Oak Beauty, I am hoping she will look presentable.

Thats about it so far- I look forward to hitting the circuit in '14, and will keep this thread updated as I go.

Many thanks!

Jon Cooper
Tewkesbury CSC
x

[joneurope]

[joneurope]

[joneurope]

[MothHombre]

Good to hear that you will be joining us in 2014. Look forward to watching the progress of the rebuild over the coming weeks. When you have 786 back on the water you are more than welcome to bring her to Frampton for the day for some racing with some other Moths. Good luck withthe rebuild.

Chris

[paultp]

Hi Jon, I double floored 784 the other year, makes the boat much stiffer and getting rid of all that water soaked cork meant it didn't get much heavier. If you want any details of what I did it might still be on my blog. Haven't updated it for ages.

Cheers and best of luck
Paul

[joneurope]

Thanks Chris & Paul.

Paul- I followed your Blog very carefully and its still saved in my favourite folder

God that Cork was a pain to remove! But lookingforward to having a stiffer boat (Shouldn't be a massive weight gain- I double floored my brothers Solo last year (hoping to apply the final coat of varnish today!, and it actually saved half a Kilo!

Cheers
Jon

[paultp]

If it was a pain to remove that is a good sign! The bits that came off easily were those where the water had got under the cork.

Good luck

[joneurope]

My thoughts exactly Paul-

Like on your moth- The floor has cracked and is not strong enough to support my Phantom sailing weight! What thickness ply did you use in the cockpit? I'm thinking a decent 4mm marine ply.

Removing the old gunwales is proving to be pretty tough aswell! (Lots and lots of little nails!). My poor chisel will need a well earned sharpen lateer on!

Thanks
Jon

[paultp]

The hull is 5mm and I used 4mm marine which I got from Dave Butler, he cut me two pieces each more than wide enough to fit half the floor and overlap at the back. I got off cuts from him to fix the hull itself and to make the wings for the centre board case. Handy to have a boat builder near who uses a lot of ply.

[joneurope]

Update as of 16/01/14:

Christ work has been busy with the recent weather! top tip - if your a property manager, take a looooong holiday over the winter period!

The gunwales are now off, the cedar and mahogany wood have arrived from robbins and are hung in the barn ready to go.

I have finished fitting the double floor on the one half of the boat, lots of self tappers, bricks and sandbags to ensure the ply was stuck down properly, hoping to do the other side one evening this week. Ive got some nice mahogany stripping to use on the outside of the cockpit to neaten the edges up, then I'll run a decent fillet along the front bulkhead and centreboard casing.

Also gave the foredeck one treatment of oxalic acid, wow what strong stuff! Hopefully it will work a treat in removing the unsightly water staining from the side decks.

The centreboard is nearly stripped back to wood, and will be sheathed with some thin(ish) woven roven to stiffen it up!

The carbon mast has been repaired in 2 places (shame theres a slight kink in the one repair 1ft of the bottom, but theres no chance of sorting that now! Will cover the bottom 1/4 of the mast with some strengthing fibreglass then wrap the lot with peel ply to blend the repairs in. The mast will then be ready for a re-varnish, then the fitting of the spreaders, gooseneck, shroud and lower terminals.

Thats it for the time being, time is ticking and the season is looming!

[joneurope]

Pics

Attachments:

[colin]

Jon, a bit of a concern with your proposed mast repair. You don’t say how you are going to consolidate the glass with peel ply. Normally you would vacuum bag but it is very difficult over a long length (1/4 of your mast) to wet wrap glass or carbon and keep it in place whilst you get the ply, blanket and bag on. The problem is that unless you can keep a reasonable tension on the cloth when you vacuum down any lose cloth will form folds. As this looks horrible, you will sand it off and in the process compromise the integrity of the layup and generate a stress raiser. The net result is that the mast will be no stronger than when you started.

I have had success using a partially resin infused 200g carbon twill that will tolerate some degree of rough handling. You could tack the starting edge of the cloth along the mast with super glue. This makes wetting out the cloth slightly more awkward but will hold the cloth in place and allow a good tight wrap. I would over wrap with heat shrink tape and having secured both ends of the tape, gently and evenly heat the wrap with a hot air gun. It’s amazing how much excess resin comes out and you will get good consolidation.

For the carbon mentioned above see under ProFinish:

www.easycomposites.co.uk/Category/Carbon-Fibre-Cloth-Fabric/Woven-Cloth-150g-to-400g.aspx

Apologies if you know all of this.

Colin

[joneurope]

Hi Colin,

The strengthening has been done to the mast via an internal sheath (About 5 inches either side of the break), and a layer of 200g Carbon twill wrapped over the outside- A trick I was showed (not as good as vaccum bagging, granted) was to duct tape the start of the peel ply onto the mast (Well above the repair), then you can get a nice bit of tension on the peel ply to force out the exces epoxy. Granted it wont be as strong a repair as vaccum bagging, but with the internal sheath, layer of carbon and layer of fibreglass; I cannot see the rapair failing-and if it does- It will be a good excuse to buy a new mast. me and a friend did an emergency repair on a Phantom mast that broke at the gooseneck at a big open (2 day event), the repair looked like a bag of shite, bulged around the gooseneck, but is still holding a couple of seasons down the line (Again, I think hes hoing it will break so he can buy a new mast, but no such luck yet!).

Cheers
Jon