Hi all.
Quick update of the progress on the Mustang 24.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, I needed to fit a wc/shower to the boat, so I came up with this
:Mar 2015 006.jpg Mar 2015 007.jpg
which was totally glassed and faired in, You would not believe how long that took!
Not totally happy with the POS sink, so I moulded and fitted my own:
11.10.15 004.jpg
You may recall from earlier photos that the interior furniture had to be butchered and removed in order to replace the stringers.
Next job was to make good the repairs and make it all fair again:
may 15 009.jpg 11.10.15 003.jpg 11.10.15 006.jpg
So that was all going nicely, if very slowly as it is a horrid job, when, for some reason, I needed to go up on the cabin top.
To my horror, I discovered that the deck was spongy and needed repair. Closer inspection revealed that the ply core of the cabin/deck had delaminated, so simply injecting epoxy was not going to fix it. A major repair was needed.
On the up side, I did get a build date for the boat.
I found this scrunched up newspaper stuffed into a cavity as insulation:
12.10.15 005.jpg
May 2, 1976.
At l;east I now have a target date to work to. In May 2016, the old girl will be 40 years old, so it would be nice to get her back in the water by then...
Anyhoo, the deck problem really slowed me down, as I knew that by far the best way to do the repair, was upside down, preferably in the garage.
After a lot of thought and one pathetic attempt to turn the boat over, I finally decided to build a frame on the outside of the deck to hold its proper shape, and to then cut the cabin from the boat and do the repairs in the garage.
Big deep breath, just do it.
It ended up taking 4 full days in total from decision to remove the offending part to reinstalling it. Quite painless in retrospect. I could even lift and move the assembly after my son helped me get it off the boat.
I didn't use timber as the core material. It only lasted 40 years! Coremat was much easier. Full vinyl-ester layup for strength. It's a little bit bouncy, but will stiffen up a lot when the side windows go in.
11.10.15 025.jpg 11.10.15 028.jpg 11.10.15 034.jpg
The boat looked a bit bare without the cabin:
11.10.15 032.jpg
But it all went back together again, epoxy glue on the gunwale joint. The joins have been glassed since the photo.
11.10.15 039.jpg
So what's left to do?
2 more hits of high-build and sanding the interior in preparation for gloss;
Sand blast the antifouling off the hull, then prep the hull and topsides (the sides of the hull - everything between the chine and the gunwale), for paint.
Prep deck and cabin for paint.
Gloss it all outside.
Put on motors, go catch fish!
Piece of cake. I'll let you know how it goes...