rub rails

[beaconhill]

I am rehabbing an old 20' fiberglass lobster skiff, and have stripped off the old, badly rotted wooden rub rails. I'm trying to figure out what type of wood to use for new rails - oak seems a possibility, but I need to be able to bend it - perhaps oak ripped to 1/4" thickness and laminated? I want to get to about 3/4" inside and out alond the rail, with a 2" cap on top.

I'm pretty new to this so any suggestions are greatly appreciated.

[Thaddeus J. Van Gilder]

hmmm old fiberglass...

has fiberglass been around long enough to call it old?

my 1923 bristol channel pilot cutter is fairly old.

The 1940 Rhodes sloop in my shop is kind of old.

A plastic boat, old??????

hmmm.......I guess :rolleyes:

[Ian McColgin]

At any rate - rub rails.

I'd not use oak as it's too hard. I'd build up with good old lumber yard fir ripped out and laminated up in say 1/2" thicknesses. That way, as you beat it up against some pilings, you won't mind too much.

G'luck

[Thad]

Well, I'd use oak, cutting where the bend is too great to bend and bending where it will work. I have bent almost two inch width air dry white oak around a remarkable sweep, but it has to be air dried or green. For those rough bends you need straight grain and you start the fastening at the start of the sweep and use the leverage on the long end to progressively bend and fasten the piece around.

[Gresham CA]

I'd use ash. Put new ash rubrails on an old thisle(sp?) that looked pretty good. That was for show though, if it's gonna be a working boat I'd follow Ian's advise.

Charles G.

[JimD]

(Douglas) fir's not a bad all purpose wood for most parts of a boat, cheaper and usually easier to come by than oak, easy to bend and work with, glues and laminates well, - my humble opinion only
jimd

[Buddy Sharpton]

Do you want to put in the extra time/money putting them on, or in the upkeep. I'm going to assume apperance is as important as function.
There's a lot to be said for installing an extra sacrificial wood strip screwed and bunged only to the "real" rubrail that is itself fastened to/thru the hull itself.

You want a hard rubrail if you're not concerned (such as you would be with a dinghy) about marring some other boat's topsides. White oak is great, but it will black spot if not religiously oiled/varnished. This is the ideal place to justify expensive teak IMHO. You wamt good looking wood accents to warm up that fiberglass. Ash is even tougher to keep looking nice than oak in this application. Mahogany is cheaper, easier to bend, just as good looking, but tougher to keep looking good as it requires varnish and borders on being to easy to gouge and dent as it is about the softest marine hardwood. What I have done and liked all around is to build on a mahogany rubrail, rail cap and sheer clamp combination, and then use a sacrificial, maybe it will get bummed up to much oneday/someday 3/4" half round of teak trim guard screwed every 6" just to the real rubrail. I just give it a swab of teak oil every now and then and any scruffs just melt away. I really like this technique. Its only weakness is if it is scrubbing vertically against the edge of a dock plank when the boat is bobbing up and down with wave/wake action. It could get banged loose, but that what fenders are there for to prevent.

[Alan D. Hyde]

If you go with fir, it's not too hard to find CVG (clear vertical grain) fir, which would be better.

Alan

[Allen Foote]

Oak or Mahogany? Depends upon what you are planning on running into. :D For steel ships I like oak....at 14 knots it gives that extra "bounce". ;) If you plan on sitting at the dock and only having drunken visitors run into you....then I'd opt for the mahogany....varnished of course. ;) But whoaaaa.....you said fiberglass? :eek: ...then DUDE!?! Teak of course! :cool:

[John of Phoenix]

Pay particular attention to the vertical grain aspect of this project. I was bending some mahogany around the bow when it literally exploded into four pieces. Horizontal grain doesn't bend well. redface.gif

[Ross Faneuf]

Since it's a plastic boat...

Look also at the large selection of hard black plastic rub rails available at places like Hamilton Marine.

[Glenn Selvin]

Ok, I feel compelled to reply to this plastic vs. wooden boat thing, especially how it pertains to old. I have a Fiberglass Lehman 12 racing dinghy... one of the early glass hulls, no gel coat since it hadn't been invented yet, oak rails, mahogany transom and thwart and mast partner. Its also a 1950, which makes it 52 years old! So, is that old? Also, how come all of you wooden hull purists don't mind fiberglassing and taping some of the seams, etc. Isn't that a bit contradictory? But for the person who said that a glass boat couldn't be old, is 52 years old old yet?

[beaconhill]

Gosh, guys, I didn't mean to start a debate over what's "old." My boat has been sitting out behind the barn for a long time, needs a lot of work, and looks pretty old to me - maybe not the correct term of art, but to a neophyte, she's old.

Thanks so much for the responses. This forum is really helpful to someone who's new to boat restoration an anxious to learn.