Sunday 21 February 2016

Repairing Redwing frames, ribs

Pintail has a few broken ribs and to repair them I decided to try this as with her deck on it would be impossible to feed a new steamed length of timber down behind the inwale and riser. There were four broken timbers that had failed at the point of greatest curvature and stress. There were two together on the port side in way of her chainplate that could not be ignored and a couple on the starboard side. New oak was cut to the Redwing scantling of 5/8" by 1/2" and long enough to overlap the break. These were steamed and clamped alongside the broken frames as shown. Now, I am not 'sistering' these frames - after a couple of weeks to dry out I drove out the fastenings of the lower part of the broken frames and cut a long scarf which was glued with Semparoc as we re-fastened, as shown. This is a bit of an experiment but it saves removing all the rib in an inaccessible part of the boat.




Saturday 6 February 2016

Paint stripping

We managed to get one of the repaired sections of planking fastened in but winter progress has been slower than expected as I do not have regular help up at the shed and instead have been doing jobs that I can get on with alone.
One such job is to continue stripping off Nanw's old paint.  I had deliberately left as much of her paint on as possible since it slows the rate at which the timber dries out with the boat out of the water. Now in the winter her salty timber is very damp again, even in the shed and I have been scraping it back. One of these modern decorator's scrapers with tungsten carbide blades is great for dry-scraping and I have also been using it on the Finesse yacht at Saundersfoot to strip her thick anti fouling. The bottom paint comes off OK but the top sides will need heat-gun or blow lamp.
Finally, I found that unless I clean and oil my plane, saws and chisels immediately after working on Nanw's timbers they quickly go rusty from contact with the salty old wood!
Old paint gradually coming off