Leaky boat- do I retighten?

[JayInOz]

G'day. Last time I took the Hartley out it took on quite a bit of water. Couldn't find any damage to the hull or holes or cracks so it had me stumped. Today we chained the boat trailer to the bucket on my neighbours excavator. I climbed aboard and he gently pushed the boat out into his farm dam.
There are three leaks- and one is quite bad. All of them are along the seam where the centre board case is bolted down. It's been bedded into a thick layer of goop which is still somewhat flexible despite its age- hard to tell what it is under many layers of paint. My question is; Can I tighten down the bolts and stop or drastically slow the leak? Or is that likely to break the seal along the whole thing and make matters worse? I'm really hoping that I don't have to remove and refasten the case. Advise me please oh wise and salty ones. JayInOz

[Ian McColgin]

I hate this sort of leak. For one thing, it sounds like the fit was poor from jump and all depended on the goop. So if you just crank on the bolts that run through the CB case's bed logs, you might well just pull the bottom up.

I don't know for sure what I'd do but I'd start by easing all the bolts back and prying the CB case up a bit, cleaning out the goop, and then seeing if the bottom of the case bed logs is a good fit to the curve of the garboards.

G'luck

[JayInOz]

No no no Ian! You were supposed to say "Nip the nuts up a quarter turn and she'll be right" I don't know that the fit would have been poor from the start- there is a long crack in the top of the case which looks like it would have to be caused by the centre board being pushed or twisted sideways- don't know how exactly but it would have been a nasty jolt when it happened. I think you're right about lifting the case- and it's going to be a right pain. Thanks muchly for the advice mate. JayInOz

[jsjpd1]

G'day Jay,
For what it's worth I agree with Ian. You'd be better off scraping the old goop out and starting anew. Good luck, it might not be fun but you'll feel better about it in the long run.

Jim

[Ian McColgin]

My Dad had a phrase for my propensity for short cuts, which makes no sense unless you've spent time rounding up and herding horses.

"The long way out is the short way home."

Like the time that I tried to quick fix the trunk of a friend's little Rhodes with successive hits of GluvIt, LifeCaulk, SitkaFlex, and finally some expanding foam. Made for a major charlie foxtrot when we finally faced reality.

Especially if you've got a wooden board, then indeed a hit while beating could twist the trunk, essentially skewing it out of its bedding. A metal board might more likely have bent. Hear's hoping that you can ease it up, clean and rebed without having to completely redo the bedlog bolts.

G'luck

[JayInOz]

Ian the board is metal and very strong. I've resigned myself to lifting the case, cleaning up the mating surfaces and reapplying goop- first up though I'll need to find a suitable goop that I can actually get hold of here- asking for generic American brands always results in the dreaded deer in the headlights look from the hardware peeps
We never had more than twenty three horses on our place- is 450 head of cattle and 23,000 sheep any good? That was on 46,000 acres with some pretty wild stuff thrown in.
Jim it's nice to see you've survived another year in the frozen north What's next on the drawing board? How about a sailing pram- SOF of course! Whatever you build, I want one JayInOz

[jsjpd1]

Hey Jay, the current project is a 1:1 scale model of Atkin's Fore 'n Aft, a 28 foot cutter. Not skin on frame but I think it'll do.
Jim

[JayInOz]

Jim you'll never get a twenty eight footer through that pipe under the road where you launch your other boats JayInOz

[P.L.Lenihan]

Ah,so true Jay but then again Jim hasn't mentioned what scheming he has been up to for dealing with that pesky pipe

[Larks]

Funny to come across this thread after just posting about repairing my Hartlay CB case on Johnno's thread before dinner:

The lateral force on the CB case had been the cause of leaks on my Hartley, somewhere along the line the epoxy glue line had cracked and started leaking and I could see where the previous owners had ground out the seams and filled with sika over the years.

When I started fixing it quite a while ago I wasn't overly aware of what to do but ended up running a strip of fibreglass along the inside seam, at least up the inside of the case as far as I could reach, and because it was over wide for the steel plate centre board (causing a sloppy fit and a lot of weather hekm) I fitted a waxed MDF mould down the centre of the CB case and then filled it with thickened epoxy. After removing the MDF I had a nice snug centerboard. I then cleaned out the seam along the CB case (inside the cabin), filled it with epoxy as best I could and ran a strip of fibreglass along it both sides and at the ends. I reckon two would have probably been better but it seems very solid now.

But I did do my repair without really knowing what other options there may be and it certainly looked like my case had originally been epoxied down and I figured that it should have been a solid join to the hull rather than a flexible mastic so my repair was based on that. Whether right or wrong it has worked out well

However, the alternative if you do want to reseal it with a mastic type join is to use Fixtech MSP190. Clean the timber surfaces and everdure them before putting down the Fixtech though and it will stick like shyte to a blanket. It is, in my experience, much better than any of the Sikaflex products

http://www.fixtech.com.au/process/ca...categoryId=571


If you want to use it and need it posted out PM me and I'll email you Troy Clifford's contact details, he manages Fixtech here and will be quite happy to post it out to you, especially if you tell him that you've heard that it sticks like shyte to a blanket. (He'll have a pretty good idea of who where that comment came from, a bit of a set up on his missus from the wooden boat show in Hobart last year.)

[JayInOz]

Ah,so true Jay but then again Jim hasn't mentioned what scheming he has been up to for dealing with that pesky pipe

I wasn't paying attention Pete- Jim is building a scale model of a 28 footer- so it may just squeeze through aforementioned pipe after all

Greg thanks for the advice. I'll probably be asking you for Mr. Cliffords address shortly, but first I'll work out exactly what I'm dealing with. The comment about the blanket is one my Dad uses too- though his spelling isn't quite so fancy. He would also describe the repair I'm about to attempt as "As easy as sh*&^*n in bed and kickin it out with your feet" which really is quite difficult At the moment I'm also building more vegetable garden beds, trying to breathe life back into an old ag bike, extending the accomodation in the pig pen, and making concrete blocks to use in construction of a courtyard wall, a cool room and eventually another shed. The block maker is an "Ideal", made in America in 1907- weighs about a quarter of a ton and works like a charm- but it's slow work! So time and dollars need some shuffling to make everything happen JayInOz

[Don Kurylko]

Last year, at my suggestion, a friend stemmed a pretty significant leak in the keel/centreboard case joint of his Lightning by soaking it thoroughly with anti-freeze (a la Dave Carnel). He is planing on taking the case apart in future because he suspects some rot under there, but for the meantime he is able to use the boat. It hasn't leaked at all since and it lives on a mooring during the summer. A repeat soaking over the winter will probably give him another season out on the water.

[jsjpd1]

That's interesting Don, how did he apply it? Turkey baster and wet burlap, just sluice it in with a bucket? Sounds like just the ticket for stretching things out a little longer before the real repair commences.

And yes Jay, it's just a scale model at the moment, or the hint of a scale model really. I'm still drawing it up from the plans. I'm having a bit of trouble coming up battens that are thin enough and flexible enough for the body plan and might go up to 2 inches to the foot. I actually think a full sized one would fit through the pipe without it's rig, getting a high enough tide to float it off my section of the beach might be problematic though.

Jim

[JayInOz]

Looking forward to seeing the finished project Jim!

Don thank you for your input. How does antifreeze work? Is it only effective for a boat in the water? My TS16 spends most of its life in a shed- dirt floor and holes in the roof, but a shed nonetheless Love you build thread by the way- stunning work- and four days since an update (ahem!) JayInOz

[Don Kurylko]

My friend just poured a bunch of it in the bilge and let it soak for several days around the leaky parts. Antifreeze (glycol) actually plumps up the wood that it soaks into and will stay that way for a long time. Periodic soakings will keep it that way. The biggest problem is keeping pets away from any puddles in the bilge. It will kill them if they lick it! Not good for humans either.

The best approach would be to use just enough for it to soak up overnight and then add a bit more the next day and let it soak up. Repeat untill saturated, then carefully wipe up and washdown whats left. According to Dave Carnel, once antifreeze dries on the surface it ceases to be toxic. It can then be glued, painted, varnished or whatever, no problem. It will also greatly inhibit rot, though it is definitely not a cure-all.

I suggest doing a test run on a piece of weathered wood that has some thin splits in it to see what happens. Then you will know if it's something that might work for you. Not everyones cup of tea, I'm sure.

The boat does not need to sit on a mooring for it to work. Nor will water leach it out once it is absorbed by the wood. No harm in giving it a try as long as one is well aware of its toxicity and takes appropriate precautions. If it doesn't work, then you know the problem is more serious than anticipated and a proper repair is in order.

Thanks for the compliments on my thread! More to come soon. Processing and posting photos seems to take forever and my free time is really limited right now.

[Larks]

Jay, it's worth doing a search here on ethylene glycol as there are quite a few threads and discussions on it and they make very informative reading, but far too much to try and summarize here. There are different glycols and only the ethylene glycol is suitable (from memory), but I'd suggest reading about it before bothering with it. I don't know that it'd be much use in your repair, it will swell the timber when out of the water, but I believe that it is displaced by water once the hull gets wet again, so when it again dries out you'd need to reapply the EG anyway to swell it again until it gets wet again.

[Jim Ledger]

I think I might have a go at putting a quarter turn on those bolts before I started taking things apart.

It might just do the trick, and if it doesn't, what's the harm.

[Don Kurylko]

Larks...I'm pretty sure that Dave Carnel wrote that EG displaces water, not the reverse. I would look up his posts on the subject for definitive answers. He was a chemical engineer (or some such) and worked with the stuff for many years. I would take what most others say about it with a grain of salt. He's the authority on the subject, in my opinion, or was. Sadly, he crossed the bar awhile back.

[Larks]

Larks...I'm pretty sure that Dave Carnel wrote that EG displaces water, not the reverse. I would look up his posts on the subject for definitive answers. He was a chemical engineer (or some such) and worked with the stuff for many years. I would take what most others say about it with a grain of salt. He's the authority on the subject, in my opinion, or was. Sadly, he crossed the bar awhile back.

I may well have it A about T Don but I'm pretty sure that I have that right, most of what I know about it is purely through Dave's posts here and his references to other reports.
Here's the link to one of Daves posts on it (which I'm about to reread myself), from what I could find this is pretty much the most comprehensive of his posts on the topic on the forum: http://forum.woodenboat.com/showthre...ht=anti+freeze

And for what it's worth, here is a thread that I did on it a while back Jay: http://forum.woodenboat.com/showthre...ent&highlight=

I can't find the reference to the Glycol being displaced by water in Dave's writings in that link (though I did really only skim read it this time around) so I may have read it in another document, but this comment in his post seems to support it:

If we put the boat back in the water, the glycol will probably leach out fairly rapidly and we would have to retreat the boat.

[Don Kurylko]

Hmmm...perhaps I'm confusing it with PEG (?), the stuff they use to preserve old wooden artifacts that have been brought up from the sea. But I'm pretty sure that antifreeze, once well absorbed into the wood, will stay there for a considerable time before needing re-application.

Anyway, I don't want to get into an argument about it. In practice on the Lightning it worked quite well and I think it has merit as a stop-gap solution to a bigger problem that eventually needs to be adressed properly. The leak around the case was bad enough that it would easily have flooded the hull over the course of an afternoon. It wasn't just a dribble.

[Larks]

No argument Don, I wouldn't think of it. PEG is the same, polyethylen Glycol, as far as I'm aware and it's certainly what is used for stabilising wooden artifacts from the deep. But for Jay's interest it's worth knowing about because, like everything else on this forum, it's about making up your own mind which fix best suits the job and therefore which to use, and in his case it may be more like your friends Lightning repair than I'm aware. I think also that there may be more to it than even Dave knew about so in the interests of learning, anything's worth a try..

From what I understand from reading Dave's and other studies, the Glycol, or PEG, does a wonderful job of replacing water as it leaves the cells of the timber and then the cell walls through evaporation, which is what would otherwise cause the shrinkage, checking and cracking. The Glycol doesn't evaporate so it rejuvenates the cell walls and the cells to preserve the integrity of new timber as it dries and of old timbers such as artefacts and hull timbers when they are out of the water.

But once that timber is saturated with water again the water displaces the glycol and I assume that in the case of the Lightning it may just be that the glycol has given it the swelling that it needed to take up and as the water has displaced it again the hull has simply maintained its integrity.

[JayInOz]

Which is sort of why I asked if the glycol would only work on a moored boat- the Hartley sits in a dry shed for weeks at a time (probably over a hundred degrees F in there at the moment). Keeping it wet isn't an option. The reason I've been reluctant to pry up the case is that there are two fairly minor leaks at the very rear of the case- one on each back corner, and the other more serious one is on the port side only, just behind the pivot point of the centre board- so the leaks are about four feet apart and in between is an awful lot of seam that doesn't leak So I would be making a major repair where perhaps it could be avoided. I'll do whatever has to be done.

Just out of interest and totally off topic- I've had a lot of trouble here over the past few months with rats in my sheds. Mostly they have been eating chook food and making a mess although they did get into stuff stored in my old fibreglass "Bellboy" and ate some cushions and a life jacket amongst other things. Anyway I have several old rabbit traps set around on beams and shelves where the rats run, and I've probably caught sixty or so in the last six months. At lunch time today- a couple of hours ago- I could hear a noise near my pheasant coop and couldn't work out what it was. I thought at first that it was peewees feeding chicks but went to make sure. What I found was a large rat in a trap just gasping its last, and trap and rat both securely bound up by an eastern brown snake about five feet long which had bitten the rat on the neck and was preparing to eat it. The trap would have presented a problem me thinks I took some not very clear photos and then tried to catch the snake which is now somewhere in the bamboo behind the coop. Eastern browns are the worlds second most venomous snake, and this is the fifth one near the house in a month. Missus wouldn't be game to go outside if I told her about every snake I see here. Apologies for prattling JayInOz

[Don Kurylko]

Okay Larks, it looks like I'm going to have to eat a little crow on this one. I contacted my friend Tim and he says that the anti-freeze initially stemmend the flow, but it did come back after awhile. Sitting on the mooring didn't help swell the wood either, so the problem is a bit more serious than at first thought. But Tim is still going to try and go another season before tackling the repair by re-applying more EG. Go figure.

Looks like you got it in one though. Water obviously does leach out the anti-freeze. Oh well, I guess I'll go over and talk to Dr. D and see if he can prescribe something for disappointment.

[JayInOz]

Well now I do have a problem! I thought I'd see if I could snug the bolts down a little- should be able to tell by the feel of it if it's going to help or make matters worse. Most of the bolts only protrude through the nuts for a quarter of an inch or less. I applied very little pressure and every bolt I tried spun with the nut. I can't tighten or loosen them and there's not enough bolt protruding to grip with anything. I might try a slot for a screwdriver but even that looks unlikely. Or I could try welding something to the end of the bolts. The only other option is some nasty wood butchery to expose the bolt below the nut enough to grip them with something. This is gonna get ugly JayInOz

[Larks]

Is there enough bolt showing to cut a screwdriver slot in the end with a grinder?