Vintage Inboard Cruisers to Centre Console Conversion

[gazza2006au]

Yeah, it's pretty breezy alright, no rain here though, try to get it straight, the more you glue in, the harder it is to fix anything, how did you jack it up? is it just hanging now?

Hey Noel im pretty sure the hull is now straight i just checked and jacked it up again from the front i aligned the starboard bunk both bunks are now straight and inline just when i jacked it the other day the whole hull shifted to starboard 100mm that is why its not sitting on the back of the bunk

The whole hull is sitting up off the trailer on the two bunks

[gazza2006au]

Hey Gazza,
The approach I took with my stringers was to run a glue bead to stick them down and clean up ALL the glue that was squeezing out ie.no fillet. When and once I was prepared with my fibreglass cloth I ran a fillet on each side and used a tongue depressor (or whatever curved tool you have) and smoothed this to a fillet. Then with the glue still dry I laid my tabbing over the wet fillet and glassed on with several layers. This made it a lot easier than doing the fillet and sanding once dry, if you let it dry any little bumps, drips and peaks are hard to see and if you don't get them off it holds up the cloth and you don't get the adhesion you really want. Was easier to lay the cloth and once set out carefully use the fin roller over the fillet are to conform the cloth into the wet glue, just be careful to try and keep your profile.

You can be a lot less careful with how neat you are with the fillet and the other little bits that get all over the place.

Cheers, Evan

Hey Evan thats how i done my transom glass while the fillet was wet yeah i would prefer to do it that way but all my stringers will be uneven heights i was going to glue down all the stringers its just easier to do one process as a time i plan on running over any fillet lumps with the grinder its time consuming but it just works easier

I was shitting my self about doing the stringers so filletting and glassing in one go i think i would be stressing to much that the glue has gone off and i wont get a bond than there is the cloth cutting and keeping organised it would be absolute chaos mate i'm a simple kind of guy a little bit here and there rather than smashing it all out in one big bang

[gazza2006au]

Went out there just now with a torch and had a look at the fillet i am really let down basically all the glue has ran down on the hull and flattened out bugger i thought its meant to be a cream adhesive this stuff was only a tiny bit thicker than resin

What do i do now leave it and fillet over it?

Grind down all the glue that has ran down and flattened out?

Majorly bummed out looks like i will have to do all my gluing with resin and saw dust from here on

[CT]

A light sand, fillet over it and get on with life.

I used a holesaw to cut round discs out of heavy plastic (old drums) to give the radius I wanted for my fillets. Cheap, easy to clean and disposable when necessary.

Don't start bogging with sawdust and resin. It will be shit to sand and there are much better products available for strength and ease of sanding.

[gazza2006au]

Yeah i'm going to buy some West System 413 microfibre blend cannot believe the prices tho 12 litres in Oz $100, 12 litres in NZ $42 AUD

Aussie Shop https://www.theboatwarehouse.com.au/...rofibre-blend/

New Zealand Shop https://www.allmarine.co.nz/product/...ystem-1-litre/

24kg West System Epoxy Resin

AU over $800

NZ $570

we live in a crap country

[gazza2006au]

I just called the fibreglass company i bought the epoxy adhesive from i explained i bought it six months ago and its runny like honey he said it should be a really thick mix and had no clue why its runny, he said it shouldn't have split in six months

i will retry it again but i will mix the container with the creamy looking stuff in it just to make sure no nothing has sunk to the bottom, the bloke said i can mix fumed silica with it to thicken it again

[gazza2006au]

Wasn't going to post a update as doing it somewhere else, plenty of nice people on this forum but there are quiet a few dick heads of late shining kind of leaving a unwanted taste to keep enjoying the forum, we all have different opinions as we all have different knowledge,back grounds and experiences but some are just coming across as having grown up in a all boys private school and their shit don't stink

last update for a while taking a break, and no this aint a Bowdidge Marine scenario all over again i am going to continue working just no updates....

[gazza2006au]

Inspection tomorrow my yards are tidy but lets see if i get my ass kicked for the big boat and unregistered land rover and alloy trailer...

i will do another update soon if everything goes ok tomorrow i will pick up another sheet of plywood to finish off the stringers, going to use talc to glue them down as its cheap 20kg $20

ran into a problem with my second stringer where it go up to the bow the very firs 200mm or so actually bends in towards the keel only slightly but i see at that 200mm point there was a bulkhead so I'm thinking about cutting the stringer back add the bulkhead than stitch the 200mm back onto the front side of the small bulkhead but will see

also that really thick laminate i couldn't grind out of the bow on both sides of the keel stringer more so towards the next two stringers is being a pain in the butt its throwing the stringers out of line and the gully the stringers sit in are around 20mm deep i am thinking of building it up with off cuts and glue than placing my stringers over the top than glassing down

[gazza2006au]

Picked up my next sheet of plywood 25mm yesterday from the same place with marine glue, had it up on the roof racks a bit hard to carry around being about 50kg and the wind blowing it around, will try cut out my stringers in the next few days it was planned for this afternoon but weather forecast says it is going to rain

need to rethink the second stringer i just cut the other day as the joints are almost side by side with the keel stringer and i need to stagger them so need to cut and splice in a new 2400mm length in the middle of the stringer

think i am going to glue and glass all my stringers into place than glue and glass my bulkheads on top of the glassed stringers not sure just yet but that is the plan

[gazza2006au]

Guys anyone know if this is enough offset from one to another stringer joint? should i change it or will it be ok? just don't wanna be messing around trying to cut up the stringer and add bits in and multi fit it if i don't need to

if i leave it as is there will be another one going in in the same position as the top one but on the other side of the bottom one

should be cutting it out tomorrow afternoon, also ordered this whopping drill bit 28mm to drill out my bung hole that Ryobi spun it piss easy drill bt cost $17.50 on ebay if i were to buy that from bunnings would be like $70

[catshark]

do you need to splice those joins with overlap or the glass will be okay. are you gonna put in floatation between the strings gaz or no need to.

[gazza2006au]

Butt joint should be ok Cat from what i am seeing online its howa lot of other boat builders are doing theirs but a little unsure about my joints from one stringer to the next being closely inline across the hull need to find out if the distance i have will be a problem

i can put a piece of ply on both sides of the joint too if needed but would rather not just more work and harder to get the cloth to go around it

yeah I'm going to do flotation because I'm not a very good swimmer and if we take on water i don't want to loose all my hard work its all deep water here so would make for a harder salvage job if the boat were to snap in half and sink even thought of tying 50 meters of rope to the engine with a boat floating bouy incase the engine falls off i have some way of lifting it up and getting it back to the ramp

[CT]

Butt joint should be ok

Scarf joint would be better

incase the engine falls off

WTF? I make contingency plans but "incase the motor falls off" just isn't even on my radar. They're called bolts Gaz!

[gazza2006au]

CT i have never fibreglassed before and thru this whole build process its on the back of my mind, i am really hanging almost 200kg thats 1/5th of a ton off a boat that is relying on 'glue' to hold it on

Once this build is done and tested i will have an idea of my abilities but untill than there is a possibility

When i cut my transom down i left that cut out piece sitting out in the weather and it delaminated over weeks i than grabbed the 10 layer laminate and tested how stiff it was and it bent quiet easily, I know my transom is rock solid but untill i test it i won't know 100 percent

[gazza2006au]

Has taking me 3 hours to cut out 3 stringers and redo 1 more getting there slowly i am seriously over cutting crap up still need to finish off the two off center main stringers as i wasn't sure if i would have enough plywood i should be able to manage all my stringers from 2 sheets of plywood one sheet cost $88 the other sheet cost $79.50 just putting that in here to record my cost for when I'm finished to tally it up

still need 1 more sheet for my bulkheads notice the two smaller stringers dont go to the front that's because a bulkhead goes right up the front there

lots and lots of hand trimming is needed to bring all the stringers down to level