Sovereign Nations

After we glued the Azek down as our new core material, we prepared to layer fiberglass onto the new core.

We started by cutting fiberglass mat to the shape and size of the entire sole.  We cut the corners and let them double up for added strength.  Then we rolled a bolt of 4 foot wide fiberglass cloth out and cut that to fit.  Once the first layer of cloth was cut in place, we pulled it up and used it as a pattern for the second piece.  Each layer of fiberglass was slightly smaller than the one under it so that we could sand the edged without sanding through any layers.

Rather than try to match the shape of the rudder post fitting, we left the glass long and planned to chisel it off afterward.  We also cut a cross into the cloth for the fuel fill but left all the material in place.

Once the glass was cut, we filled gaps and leveled the low spots as well as we could.  This mostly meant building up the areas around the fuel fill and the rudder post.  Once we started, it was imperative that we kept moving, since you can layer on the epoxy until it’s no longer sticky, but after that you have to allow it to cure, then sand, before adding more.  We were determined to get the glass laid in one day, and we did.

Epoxy on the Azek, fiberglass mat on the epoxy.  We rolled more epoxy onto the mat, and it took quite some time before we got the hang of it.  Keeping the roller dripping wet and not rolling too many times was key – otherwise the fibers making up the mat would begin to stick to the roller, then bunch up and try to lift.  Ugly!  One of the high spots that tormented me during fairing was due to this problem.  In the future, I might put down the mat and let that set up, then sand it flat before laying on the cloth.  There’s less grinding that can be done with cloth, since the weave is part of its strength.

However, this time we went for broke, laying on the cloth and more epoxy, more cloth and more epoxy.  It’s a shame that such a huge effort looks rather unimpressive in pictures, but here you go.

On a side note…the fiberglass flaps we left around the fuel fill packed under so nicely and filled the space so well that we left them.  Rather than try to build another wooden platform like the old one, we decided to make a molded epoxy base that would build on the strength of all that fiberglass wedged up in there.

While grinding down the rough edges of fiberglass on the footwell sides, I realized that more fittings needed to be removed.  Oh, and maybe it would be a good idea to tape everything?  After all, I was going to try to fair up the sides, which would mean slopping epoxy very near some very important items…

After sanding the fiberglass as smooth as possible, I made up a bad-ass concoction of West Systems 407 Low-Density filler and epoxy.  I wanted something that would be easy to sand and didn’t need strength.  The filler went on well with a large spreader and I didn’t attempt to smooth it too much.  In the past, the more I work it, the shallower I make it.  That means that I still have low spots after fairing and have to do it again.  I wanted to skip that if possible, and did a pretty good job!

In the photo, it’s not just shiny – it’s thick!  When I started sanding it down, I was struck by the difference.

I’m glad I picked the low-density filler, because my fancy plan worked!  Building it up a little extra made it come down fair without having remaining low spots.  I was a very happy sander.

And the whole thing, sanded.

After a coat of straight epoxy to seal the filler and another sanding, we primed.

However, we couldn’t paint immediately.  There was the small matter of the cockpit drains…

Last post was about demolishing our old cockpit sole – removing the top skin and all the old plywood core.  With a clean and clear bottom skin, we were ready to cut some Azek pieces.

The two fittings we couldn’t remove were the fuel fill and the rudder post fitting.  We decided to go thicker on the Azek, so I needed to cut a square piece, cut it in half, cut the shape of the rudder fitting into the halves, and then thin it with the router so that it would slide under the fitting.

The slots are for the fasteners, and the unevenness of the edges is the result of working blind.  I had to push the piece under and shift it around, trying to get a feel for where it was binding up.

In the process of doing this work, I realized that the bottom skin felt a little precarious.  It was tabbed onto the sides and had support from underneath for about two inches, but that wasn’t true on the aft side.  In the picture above, you can see that there’s tape along the edge.  That’s because we broke through there and we were trying to keep the rain out!  So I laid 4-inch wide fiberglass tape all the way around the footwell, reinforcing the bottom skin’s ties to the sides (which go all the way down to the hull).

The glass also covered a coupe of spots where we went too deep with the router (while removing the top skin).  Strangely, we didn’t cut through the bottom skin at all while cutting free-hand with the grinder.  Yet another example of the right tool for the job making everything easier.  The flattened cockpit drain holes were partially covered, but I wasn’t worried about it.  I was going to install the new drains exactly over the old ones anyway.

The pencil line down the middle of the bottom skin was marked very carefully.  I couldn’t figure out how to cut the core, what with the two sides being very uneven and narrowing as they move aft.  And then I had to figure in the square inserts I made for the fuel fill and the rudder post.  I decided that marking a center and then measuring each side of that would be more accurate.  It definitely kept me from skewing the angles.

My first thought had been to measure the forward width, measure the aft width, then plot those and cut straight lines between the outboard edges.  But really, I didn’t quite trust it.  My way involved more measuring, more plotting, and more drawing lines on the Azek, but as you can see below, I can geek out on that kind of thing.

I can’t say the pieces went in without any shaving of edges, but the problems were small and easily corrected.  Here are the two pieces of core, cut out and ready to be glued into place.

And levered into place with the other pieces, forward…

And aft…

Once again, I felt like I used every tool we owned on this project.  Jigsaw, router, Dremel, and drill.  The jigsaw is my favorite tool (yes, I have a favorite, don’t tell the others), but the router kicked ass on shaping the odd places.  The Dremel, once again, was outmatched and screamed for mercy.

And all six pieces went into place.  Not without gaps and not without unevenness.

On James’ next days off, we glued the pieces down.  A mayo-consistency blend of West Systems epoxy (slow hardener in deference to the slight heat) and colloidal silica was spread by hand all over the bottom skin of fiberglass and on the bottom surfaces of all the Azek pieces.  And of course we weren’t done there.

James did his stint as Epoxy Man, making batch after batch, which we injected into gaps.  The whole shebang needed to be weighted down in order to bond the Azek to the bottom skin, and we decided to get weights that could do double-duty.

That’s the end of coring the sole.  We waited for the epoxy to cure, then went back and filled gaps where the previous attempt hadn’t filled the space.  We spent all that day grateful that this summer has been temperate when compared to last summer’s firestorm of heat.  This epoxy work would have been much harder if it had wanted to go off faster.

The next project was fiberglassing the new core.

Now that we’ve been working on this project for weeks, I wish I had posted mini-project updates as I went.  Since I wish I had, I’m going to split it up into pieces and backdate them to the actual dates done.  The first piece…demo.

We removed all the fittings that we thought would get in the way.  This turned out to be “Removing Fittings – Part 1″ because I hadn’t thought about painting the whole footwell!  Anyway, some fittings had been installed with 5200 and some with epoxy and some without any bedding whatsoever.  Above, I’m using a scraper to break the bond of 3M 5200 that kept the stainless binnacle stuck to the cockpit sole.

Here’s a short 101 on re-coring.  Most decks, cockpit soles, and cabin tops are sandwich construction, meaning that there are two layers of fiberglass with some sort of core material.  Our decks and cockpit sole are (were) cored with plywood and our cabin top is cored with something called honeycomb and which I can’t find good information on.  If you know what kind of honeycomb was being used by Danboats in the early 1960′s, let me know.

When the core is punctured (to install fittings, for example), water can make its way under the top layer of fiberglass.  It will eventually rot the plywood or other material, creating soft, squishy, and/or very flexy decks.  Our cockpit sole flexed terribly under our feet, feeling very soft.  And so we knew that we would have to replace the core.

Best case scenario on re-coring, one cuts the top skin carefully and evenly, removes a portion of core, replaces it with the same material, and glues the top skin back into place.  That wouldn’t work for us because we were cutting the inside angle along the sides and because we were pretty sure there wasn’t much good stuff.

Our plan – remove the top skin and throw it away, leaving a lip under which we would slide the new core material.  Use Azek (pvc lumber) in place of plywood because it doesn’t rot.

James is making the first hole.  We used every tool we own (and one that we borrowed from David Bitner – thanks, Dave!) in cutting the top skin off.  We found that the router chewed through far too much material and couldn’t get very close to obstructions.  The Dremel whined and cried and popped its brushes.  Dave’s grinder did the job with little fuss but a huge amount of muss.  And last but not least, our little Milwaukee reciprocating saw got into the hard-to-reach places, if at the expense of delicacy and control.

We also had to cut around the two fittings that we couldn’t remove.  Neither the fuel fill nor the rudder post fitting could be removed.  We weren’t about to start a rudder project in the water (not wanting to dive for such an important part were it to fall to the bottom of the Chesapeake), and the fuel fill was fine, except the bolts being frozen.

And then, when we lifted the top skin…

And just so, when you’re laughing your ass off, you can feel the proper hilarity:

“Looks like we were right, James.  The cockpit sole WAS a little soft!”

The next step was to scoop up all the soft, wet, loose pulp (seems like overstatement to call it wood) and scrape out any bits that remained.  We quickly realized that there was no good wood and we did the top-skin-cutting procedure all over again.  At least this time we skipped the wimpy tools and went right for the massive grinder.

Cutting all the way against the sides gave us a new option.  We could cut the core material into fewer pieces, since we weren’t going to slide them under the lip.  We could also go with a slighly thicker Azek and build up the cockpit sole a bit higher.  I’ve been wanting it higher since we bought the boat.  This will get my eyes above the hard dodger, this along with the grating I’m going to build.

Even with the grinder, there were bits that had to be removed the hard way.  Of all the demo, the fuel fill gave me the biggest headache.

That’s because it had been repaired by someone, at some point.  Check out the strange blend of materials.

Of all the pieces we had wanted to save, the cockpit drains were at the top of the list.  Unfortunately, they had also been the focus of multiple “drill and fill” operations in the past.  For the uninitiated, drill and fill is a method of putting off the very project we were doing.  In this procedure, one drills through the top skin and into the core material.  One then pumps as much epoxy into the core as possible.  There are specially formulated epoxies for this.  We used Smith’s Penetrating Epoxy on Sovereign Nation in 2002 or 2003, but should have replaced the bad wood.  There’s also Git-Rot and a million others.  And of course, West System will tell you how to make their epoxy penetrate better, too.

I’m going to come right out and say it.  Drill and fill is half-assed repair work.  Sooner or later, someone will have to get in there and break out all the epoxy you injected.  And that person?  They’re going to be cussing your ass.

So anyway, here’s the section around the cockpit drains after I spent a ridiculous amount of time cleaning them up.  Which had to be done while sitting on the lazarette hatch and not putting any real pressure on the bottom skin, by the way.  Quite the trick.

And of course, the fact that so much drill and fill had been perpetuated around the drains meant I couldn’t leave them as they were.  Obviously they didn’t keep the draining water from entering the cockpit sole.  So off I chopped them and…well, the installation of the new drains is a later story.

We had a millimeter or two of actual wood along the edges in some places.  Here’s James, chiseling out the annoying remains of the original core.

I couldn’t get to the nuts holding this fitting in place, so we had to leave the top skin of fiberglass in place under it.  I carefully etched out all the wood, though, using this mirror to check my work.

And then, finally, we had a clean bottom skin onto which we could apply our new Azek core and fiberglass top skin.

James built this table that hooks to the wall on one side and hangs from the cabin top on the other.  It’s awesome, but often frustrated us.  Bet you can see why.

And we’d been meaning to add rails to the sides so that things couldn’t just slide off.  I decided to take care of both issues and got down to business.  I first cut strips of Azek and used the router to round the tops.  I also made a lip on each one so that it would sit partly on the table.

Since the rails extended the depth of the table, I had to cut the sides of the table back or I would have a strange void at each end.  Here, I marked the cuts.  The odd shape at the corner is what I wanted to keep.

Here it is, cut and with the rails on.

Then I screwed blocks under the companionway and loops to hold the shock cord.  When it all came together, the table was no longer homeless.

Sometimes you have to do this:

And this:

Before you can do this: