Thread: Goat Island Skiff – Advice for Completing

What a shame to do so much work, actually pretty good looking work and make such poor choices about epoxy and paint. You need someone more experienced than I to comment but my opinion is that you need to scrape - remove every bit of calk and paint. That wonderful light wood is suppose to be very subject to rot and I suspect that you need to fillet the air tanks front and back at the very least to insure they do not leak and fillet the rest of the boat in order to have a sound structure and prevent rot. I don't think the inside of the centerboard case is important if it has been epoxied. If you can smooth it, OK, but you would need to insure that that area is epoxied as well. I don't think epoxy would make a safe bond over paint or calk. The bond on the enwalls does not look good and I'm wondering if they might just pop loose if you inserted some kind of lever and pried a bit. Good luck. You have a lot of work to.

You might want to put the goat on a level platform and see if the hull is twisted.

Hi again Tom and welcome to this side of the Goat community as well!
I agree with Northstar's comments, you'd better scrape of paint and caulking and replace it with epoxy. See if the gunwales gets off with just a broad chisel, otherwise jigsaw and plane seems like a good idea. Any good epoxy should stick to epoxy me thinks (residual paint and caulking might give it trouble though?). It's almost as someone made a nice "flat pack kit" and then someone else made a mess out of it through using sub standard paint and glue. There will be quite som work to make that part of the job undone, but still less than starting from scratch.

I am sure that someone more knowledgeable (one who actually has built a goat or similar boat) will chip in with more detailed advice

Good luck

Pontus

I have been giving some thought to your comment about will epoxy stick to epoxy. I think the answer must include some comment about type of epoxy. Some types leave a waxy surface that must be scrubbed off. I think if you give the epoxied parts a through scrubbing with a good detergent and water and then sand them it should take any other brand of epoxy very well. Since you have no idea what is on there best proceed with all due caution so it comes out in the end. What you do now will effect the rest of the life of the boat and determine whether you are pleased or miserable.

Another thought. Have you checked the inside of the air tanks fore and aft to make sure they were epoxied? That could be critical in the life of the boat.

I have sent you a private message.

That caulk looking stuff may be polyurethane glue (Gorilla Glue), not caulk. Take a scraper to it and see how rubbery it is. Yes, you should be concerned about a boat that has deviated so badly from established building methods.

Epoxy sticks to epoxy very well, regardless of type or brand.

You'd be well advised to have a builder, maybe even a Goat builder have a good look at this boat. I say this mostly because of your questions, which indicate your experience level and the reason you're having trouble accessing this little puppy. My biggest concer isn't if she has epoxy on her, but the quality of some of the stock used. I see one photo with a big loose knot dead center in a stringer or rub rail or something, which suggests the builder hadn't a clue about picking out appropriate lengths of stock for a specific part, begging the question, what else did he make this types of decisions about.

Thanks for the input and the welcomes everyone.

Northstar, the inside of the centerboard case is epoxied, though I should probably do another thorough inspection of that to make sure. My garage floor is nominally level, but I’ll prop the boat up to make the bottom perfectly level and then measure the rest against that. Unfortunately the inside of the air tanks do not appear to be epoxied, just painted. The bottom face of the front and rear seats appear to be epoxied though. I’m not sure if I’ll ever be able to get all the paint out of the air tanks, I might have to do my best and take my chances . . . Hopefully if I keep those areas tightly closed, and I’m diligent about airing them out after, then whatever I use in there will hold up.

Pontus, I had the same thought about this being a kit build; the plans includes Clint Chase’s plans for the yawl rig, but of course the builder could have just printed those from the web. In any case, the hull does look well-built and properly coated, it’s just the inwales and the paint that look suspect.

PAR, I did cut into some of the caulk inside the boat and it feels just as rubbery as caulk. Is Gorilla Glue similarly rubbery? I’ve only used it in small quantities (i.e. inside of the glued joint without spillover).

My thought on Gorilla Glue is that it about as rubbery as steel.

The foamy parts of oozed out polyurethane glue aren't especially strong and nothing like steel. I have little use for this type of adheasive, so my practical experence with it is low, but the ooze out should be relatively easy to pick away with a blade. If it's gummy, you're probably correct and it's caulk. You can save it if you apply some tape over it, after a good sanding. The end grain may not be as sealed as it should be, but you don't have to bust open the seams either. The chine radius loos too tight, but it there's good contact, maybe not an issue.

If it was me, I'd doubt everything and start laying new fillets and tape on suspected areas, as well as replacing questionable materials and techniques, like the whole of the rub rail, inwale and spacers.

If you are correct and the fillets are caulk, I'm thinking they have to go. Putty knives come in a variety of shapes and sizes and would be a good place to start. You can also go to an auto parts store and buy some picks. I think they are recycled dental picks, but should really help in getting into those tight corners and narrow spaces that are going to be important to clean in order to get a tight bond when you fillet with the real thing.

If the caulk provides a good radius, for subsequent applications of cloth "tabbing" then leaving it there will not affect strength or stiffness and this could save a lot of work too.

On a technical level you could construct joints of both epoxy and caulked fillets and there would be a measurable strength and stiffness difference, but in regard to a small boat's parts and panels, if tabbed properly, the failure point will be in the wood, not the tabbing. In fact, most production boats are built this way, so the bulkheads, partitions and other attachments (like stringers) don't create stress concentrations. They use a bead of polyurethane (usually) under each bulkhead, stringer (etc.) and usually smooth the ooze out, into a fillet looking sort of thing. Then they tab (apply overlapping tape or fabric) the part and to the hull shell (or wherever). Again, this assumes the radius of the fillet (regardless of material) is "easy" enough to permit the 'glass to lay down nice. Simply put, you can use you aunt Millie's mash potato salad as a filleting material, if the radius is large enough, to permit the 'glass to not kink or pucker, when it's applied.

This isn't to say fillets aren't important, but is just to say that the tabbing is the important thing in most cases. There are fillets that don't have tabbing and these do need to be structurally appropriate. In these cases, you should remove the caulk and pack thickened epoxy into the gap and radius it out into a nice fillet. Often times, these are cosmetic in nature, but some will be structural. The best thing you can do is go over the plans and identify the straight fillets and taped over fillets. The taped over fillets are good with the caulk, the ones that are naked, should be removed and done properly.

I think that would include the seat/tank tops for sure since MIK mentions that fillets in this area are needed for structural support. I would be too anal to allow the calk to stay if it were my boat but PAR is waaaay ahead of me on these things.

Thanks Par. Stripping the caulk seems easier than trying to fiberglass over it, so my plan for now is to strip all the paint and caulk and than evaluate what I've got when I get there.

An hour with the palm sander rewarded me with about 3 square feet of clean wood . . . time to break out the belt sander I think.

I'm not sure how much twist is OK (nobody's perfect, right) but mine seems acceptable. With the bottom of the boat perfectly leveled just behind the mast step, the stem was perfectly plumb, and the bottom was perfectly level at the stern. Just in front of the rear seat, my level showed the starboard side to be high by 0.5 degrees, which works out to about 0.3" higher than the port side.

0.3" seems within tolerance (0.5-1cm), so it looks like you lucked in there, of course you could always plane that section down. I understand disliking the sanding but be careful with that belt sander the can take away more than you'd like rather quickly. Maybe try a heat gun and scraper to get rid of the bulk of the material before hitting it with the palm sander. I use a budget RO sander hooked up to my vacuum and dust bucket for most of my sanding work, it's a nice happy medium between the belt and palm sanders.

Good luck. Are you finishing the interior bright?

Cheers Dan

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Great to hear (on the twist tolerance).

I mis-"spoke" about my sander. It is a random orbital sander, and I'm going to try some higher quality (and somewhat coarser) discs before I decide to go all-out with the belt sander.

My plan at present is to finish the rails and seat-tops bright, but probably paint the rest to save time, future maintenance, and to hide imperfections.