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Project Log:  Sunday, November 8, 2009
Home Page > The Project > Project Logs > 11/8/09

I continued with the hull sanding, and wrapped up the job in just over an hour.  Then, I spent an hour cleaning up the terrible mess from the past two days.  It was a nice day out, so I opened the big door to help air out the shop, which also enabled me to get some better pictures of the progress.

         

    

I'd had quite enough sanding for the moment, and had some things to do outdoors while the weather was warm and pleasant, but before quitting for the day I decided to dissect the two chainplate knees I'd cut out earlier--the main chainplates, which had been fully glassed-over inside the boat.  I had no intention of reusing any of the components, but was curious to see how the stainless steel chainplates and bolts had held up over the years while encased in their fiberglass tomb.

The first set of pictures shows the port main chainplate and knee--the one hidden inside the old head locker in the original boat's layout.  I used a cutoff wheel on an angle grinder to cut away the fiberglass around the chainplate as needed.  In this particular case, the fiberglass overlay was loose as soon as I completed my cuts, and I easily pulled it off by hand; it was not well bonded to the plywood core of the knee, nor to the metal of the chainplate or bolts.

Similarly, the remaining portions of the fiberglass that had encapsulated the plywood knee were debonded enough that I could easily pry up the fiberglass. The chisel is only holding the fiberglass up for illustration; the material was loose and I could have pried it away by hand.

The plywood knee was damp and stained, but still sound.  The stainless steel chainplate appeared to be in surprisingly good visual condition, with no external evidence of deterioration beyond the rust staining seen, which looked bad, but was really just cosmetic staining from the corrosion of the bolts.

I turned the knee over and made cuts around the nut-side of the chainplate bolts to see how they fared.  Again, it was a cinch to pull off the fiberglass once the cuts were made; any bonding was minimal.  The condition of the nuts and washers reflected that of the bolt heads on the opposite side.

         


The second set of pictures shows the starboard chainplate knee as I performed the same basic dissection as described above.  Roughly the same conditions existed here:  poorly-bonded fiberglass (or not at all), surface corrosion on the stainless components (though in worse condition than the port side), and damp yet firm and sound plywood.

         

    

Note:  My comments are not intended to cast aspersions on Allied, nor to suggest that the conditions I found on hull #16 are necessarily representative of other boats of the class.  This is simply a straightforward report of the conditions I found during my own dissection.  That said, clearly I do not plan to reinstall the chainplates using the original building methods.

Total Time Today:  2.5 hours

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