Friday, May 23, 2014

Making progress down in the bowels of the boat

OK so after a couple of days of grinding and grinding and filling and more grinding, well you get the picture. Actually there are no pictures yet do to the fact that there is nothing to show that you can see. I was filling and smoothing the very rough glass work in the area of the hull that will be the inside of the port side fuel tank.
I also decided to do some other work that is needed while I had all that space to work in. First there was the issue of two sea-cocks that were questionably installed and then the reinforcing of the main bulkhead to hull joints.
I also ended up working in the aft end of the bilge. I had cleaned it all out and decided to try to get all the heavy grinding done before I cleaned up, again.


I had built water tanks in between the stringer aft of the shaft log.This is the glass work on the forward side of the forward bulkhead of the lower tank. It really is just for reinforcing the joint. The other side was glassed in some months back and tank filled for a couple of day to test the joints.







Once that was done I made a small filler piece to seal off the area under the shaft log. It would have been a very difficult place to access to keep it clean. So I just sealed it off and glassed in the forward side of the shaft log as well. So now there is no recessed space under the shaft log , the forward face of the log continues all the way to floor of the bilge.









I did install a 1" tube under the two center line tanks to drain the area aft of the tanks where the rubber shaft
( read leak) is located.This is the forward end of that tube where it exits just ahead of the new glass work.

I wanted to get this work done before I built the gray water tank into the bilge just ahead of this area. Once that is in the access to this area will not be as good.












Another project was figuring out better limberholes through the stringers in the engine room. The way they had done them was to cut notches out of the stringer and then try to wrap the glass work into them. It did not work for sh*&. They are always clogging up and I do not think they are really sealed so water is getting into the stringers.

I made a 1-1/4" Dia. Fiberglass tube, drilled out the original hole and puttied the tube in with fiberglass resin putty filler I make. I thought about just using PVC tubes, but I worry that the polyester resin will not bond to the PVC well enough to assure there are not leaks into the stringers over the years. I do not want to have redo any of this work...

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