a.b. tefla quandry

[capt. barnacles]

i have recently acquired a '58 kings cruiser. i live in central wisconsin and plan to use it for 3 and 4 week family vacation sails on the great lakes. it has been on the hard for a few (unknown) years and the planking is solid but shrunk. its my understanding that it could take weeks for it to seal back up once relaunched. can any one tell me the pros vs. cons of sealing it in a layer of glass and epoxy. i have been working with glass for years and am perfectly comfortable with skinning the hull, but i really dont want to destroy the value, intrinsic or otherwise, of the vessel. i have heard a lot of the downfalls of 5200 for caulking wood planked boats. is there any better solution than putting it in the water each spring and waiting for it to seal before leaving shore.

[MiddleAgesMan]

Uh oh.

[Garret]

A bit of warning. This is a topic that comes up every so often & opinions abound. In fact, things can get downright heated.

Some pics of the boat & your location will help.

A couple of points from my perspective:

1) 5200 is not a wood boat caulk. Caulking a wood boat is nothing like caulking a bathtub - entirely different concept. Traditional carvel planking is caulked with cotton driven into the seams & a small amount of compound put over the top - for the visual & also to keep marine growth out. The compound does little or nothing to keep water out - it's the cotton & wood swelling that does that.

2) I spent hundreds of hours & over 250 8" 16 grit disks to get the epoxy skin off my boat. Why? Damaged wood from it never drying out (water will get in somehow) & damage caused by that water freezing. 70 year old planks that were never coated were fine.

Skinning can be used to get a few years out of a boat that otherwise wouldn't make it, but it will make any future repairs that much tougher to do.

My 2 cents.

[StevenBauer]

Talisman was built in 1959 and when we bought her she had been out of the water for 4 years. You could see daylight through her seems from the inside. In hundreds of places. I sprayed her down with a hose a few times a day for a week before launching her. When launched the bilge pumps ran steadily for a few hours then started cycling. By the next morning they were barely coming on at all. It would be a shame to ruin a good boat over unfounded fears.



Steven

[Gerarddm]

Agreed with #4. Costs you nothing to try, may save a costly strategic error.

[capt. barnacles]

i have heard the "seal the hull at its own peril" argument and i firmly believe that the seal is only good as long as it is sealed. then it just becomes a way of holding in the moisture. 5200 would have the same "seal" characteristics as skinning the planks.
i have owned many boats for many years but never a wooden one. because of the planned limited use i was hoping for a solution other than just let it leak 'till it stops ideal. that is why i joined this forum, hoping for some advice on options. if cotton is the traditional and best way to make her tight then that is that. i have heard only a couple of ways to do that.
is there a compound, as mentioned by garret, that is better suited to being hauled most of the year including over winter in central wisc.? i love the lines and appreciate the classic workmanship of this vessel and would rather not diminish any of her handling characteristics by over stiffening the hull. i believe in the; do it right, do it once motto; and i am not familiar with the products available or their inherent strengths and weaknesses. or is it better to not use any of the "fairing" compounds. i really would appreciate any advice given, based on personal experience or expert knowledge. thank you all

[Garret]

The reason I started on my rebuild was because the glass skin trapped some water that I missed in the fall. My boat is in Maine & the water (only about 1 pint) froze. My propeller shaft runs through a 7"x12" horn timber. After she thawed in the spring, I could stand alongside the boat (she was on the hard on jackstands) & put all 4 fingers of one hand on the shaft - through the side of the boat. IOW - a 7" long almost 1" wide crack had appeared. As anyone here can tell you, replacing a horn timber is no small task.

In northern New England, there are many traditional wood boats that get stored on the hard for 6+ months/year. If the planks are in good shape & the boat is properly caulked, the boat will swell as Stephen described. Since your boat has dried out, I'd also do exactly what said & wet it down. It might make sense to get an experienced surveyor or boat builder to take a look at her & see what they think.

My brother bought a boat that had been on the hard for over 10 years. He wanted to move her (from Maryland to Vermont) - but you could see daylight though many of the seams & he was concerned about her working too much while traveling. He soaked her with a hose for a few days & then let her sit in the travelift slings over a weekend before trucking her north. She did fine. The amount of water that came in at first was scary (3 sump pumps could not handle it), but by Sunday night the flow was down to where the boat's bilge pump could do it alone.

The former owner of my boat went with skinning below the waterline & 5200 in the seams above it. I have removed all of that & gone back to traditional methods. They work best IMO. 5200 is particularly scary stuff around a wood boat. It's more an adhesive than anything else & removing it will often remove wood with it. Paint won't stick to it either.

If you want to fair planks, using some epoxy based fairing compounds is fine (on clean, bare wood) - but it cannot cover any of the seams. Each plank needs to remain separate, with only caulking between them.

[Tom Hunter]

"its my understanding that it could take weeks for it to seal back up once relaunched." capt b.

"I sprayed her down with a hose a few times a day for a week before launching her. When launched the bilge pumps ran steadily for a few hours then started cycling. By the next morning they were barely coming on at all." Steve B. talking about his actual experience with his own boat.

Two points: 1) Swelling up does not take weeks, though you can make is less scary by using a hose on the boat a few days before launching. 2) Your best option is to see if she leaks at all after she swells.

Once you know if she leaks you can start to explore caulking options. You will also know where the leaks are, because a leak in the shaft log is a very different problem from a leak in the garboards or at a particular plank.