Week 8-9

This week, Eric decided that he wanted to make a closer inspection of the CB box in hopes to have the boat sailing this summer. Upon closer inspection, it was found that the vertical pieces that make up the box were rotten and the box would need to be removed, taken apart, and salvaged where able.

To remove the box, Barrett Snow hopped in with his skill saw and cut through the drift pins and everything, removing each lateral section at a time. Then, the rest was chiseled out around the old keel bolts. Having the old keelson out was a blessing in disguise, because it enabled me to better access the broken keel bolts all along the keel and pound them out. If we hadn't removed the keel, those would have stayed in the boat rotting away.

Also having the keelson out, I was able to make patterns of seven floor timbers that needed to be replaced. Five new ones were cut out and fit up FWD and two are in the process of being fit AFT. Once these were fitted, I removed all the new oak going back in the boat and sealed them in epoxy. Then, they were screwed back into placed with bedding compound.

As a side project, I began working on building up the shaft of an oar lock where it had previously worn away from use so that we can have new bronze ones cast. This process was a little tricky but I ended up making a mold using a block of hard wood and drilling out the appropriate sized hole. A product called Marine Tex was used to build it up.