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Thread: Advice needed

  1. #16
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    Quote Originally Posted by mandoman View Post
    Here is a picture of the tar. This is inside the boat where it leaks. There is more tar on the outside, but not as thick as inside.
    Attachment 455648
    Do you need to remove all the tar? or just some of it?
    If you can flip the boat and treat the "loose" boards, could you leave the tar where it is?
    regards from Alberta, Canada

    ian

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  3. #17
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    Jun 2008
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    Quote Originally Posted by ian View Post
    Do you need to remove all the tar? or just some of it?
    If you can flip the boat and treat the "loose" boards, could you leave the tar where it is?
    That is exactly what I am thinking is the best approach at the moment.

  4. #18
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    That 'tar' is interesting looking stuff. Not the bitumen based stuff like Duraseal I was thinking of. Maybe tar epoxy??? A heat gun and hook scraper would be my first choice of tools. It may scrape off easily when warm. If it is tar epoxy be cautious. It has a reputation for being carcinogenic.

  5. #19
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    Jun 2008
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    Has been significant progress, but slow. Far too many distractions. Lots of problems you would expect from a 65yo boat. I was shown a picture of it from 4-5 years ago and it looks almost pristine. No wonder the owner was devastated when he got it back. He got it back in the nick of time. A bit more time in the weather and there would be rot in the plywood all around the gunnel under the deck. Fortunately I found just a couple of soft spots in the plywood that I cut out.

    Spent a lot of time on the transom which was a mess, but all sorted now. All the decking has been replaced and the protective metal strip on the gunwales removed and re-screwed. Lots of plated steel screws on the gunwales that had rusted to almost nothing. A few original bronze screws were still there and no rot associated with those. Had to drill out must of the holes and fill to get rid of the rust and associated rot. Deck replacement was mostly straight forward but time consuming. Colour matching was tricky, but got it close enough and the owner is happy so I am happy. Fortunately the old plywood came off in one piece so I could use it as a template. Ended up with a vegemite jar full of corroded nails and screws. Some bronze nails broke off so they stayed in.

    After deck replacement everything is now firm and solid. We managed to flip the boat easier than I had expected. 6 blokes and one running around with tyres and foam. Lifted and slid off the trailer onto tyres each side of the prop shaft and each side of the hull. Then tipped her over. Now can approach the problem of the leak. First thing was I found rot in the protective strip of timber over the keel at the front so the rotted bit has been removed. A quick clean up and the source of the leak is obvious. You can see the gap in the picture, and the black colour is all tar. Not sure how far into the wood it has penetrated, but does not look good. I still have a lot more tar to remove. It does look like Duroseal or some equivalent and is messy and sticky. I am still contemplating what is the best approach.

    Old deck. Has been exposed to the weather and delaminated
    old deck.JPG

    Old deck off
    deck off.JPG

    New deck
    new deck.JPG

    Flipped
    flipped.JPG

    Problem area
    gap.JPG

    Problem area up close
    gap closeup.JPG

  6. #20
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    Bega NSW
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    More progress today, and I am now feeling much better about this. It should be fixable despite the tar. Cleaned off more tar, although it is slow and messy going. The only thing that works reasonably well is a wire brush. I thought I would plane a layer of wood away to see how far the tar had penetrated. That exposed wood with the grain going across the boat. What the?? Out with the chisel and it now became obvious it was plywood. So I tore out a strip of plywood, and I can now see what looks like mahogany between the plywood garboard planks. The keel is mahogany and the garboard planks are nailed to the keel with large copper or bronze nails. A strip of plywood was nailed and glued to the keel between the garboard planks. I can see remnants of the glue on the plywood I tore out. It was absolutely soaked in tar and I think partially rotted because it disintegrated, but I can't see the rot because it is all black from the tar. Anyway, it is now obvious why it was leaking. The nails on one garboard plank are loose. I can get a scraper in the gap, and the nails move when I put the scraper in the gap and move it around. This boat is basically nailed and glued, but the glue has gone brittle with age, and the nails have loosened. So even when wet and the wood swells, the gap remains because the nails are not holding the garboard plank against the keel. I even managed to remove one nail just with my fingers.

    So path ahead is to remove all the centre plywood strip and plane the keel and edges of the plywood to bare wood. There is a large bolt that secures a bulkhead to the keel that will need to be removed, and the fin will also need to be removed. I am not looking forward to that because all bolts have been right bastards to remove because of corrosion. The main concern is how far the tar has penetrated into the garboard planks. There is end grain in the plywood so it may have penetrated a fair way. Fingers are firmly crossed I can get it back to bare wood. If I can get it to bare wood then it is just a matter of replacing the nails with silicon bronze screws, tighten it all up and then epoxy a new centre strip of plywood to the keel and garboard planks. I won't be able to glue the garboard planks to the keel because there is tar in the join, and there is no way I will be able to get it all out. The owner has been told it would have been a straight forward repair if he had not used tar and builders bog!

    There is still the issue of a gap between the garboard plank and the next plank, but I need to clean that up and think about it, later.

    Here is what I cleaned out today.
    IMG_0537.JPG

  7. #21
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    The optimism was misplaced. I have spent a few more hours cleaning up and the more I clean up the worse it gets. Had the owner have a look and we both decided to stop at the fin and leave the rest alone. I had intended to remove the fin and cleanup the whole of the rest of the boat and re-glue. Is now looking like a nightmare. The first 1m is fine, no tar so I can repair that and it will be water tight. The next 1.3m I have taken 3-4mm off the keel wood but still some tar visible. The main problem is the plywood. I can't get to bare wood. The tar has penetrated into the plywood, it has even gone under the paint and the paint has peeled off. All screw holes and nail holes have tar penetration. The loose nails were all covered with tar when removed. I have removed all the loose nails and planed the plywood, but it is still black with tar. There is a limit to how much I can take off before I run out of keel wood. The owner was told with unlimited time and money the garboard planks should be replaced, and maybe the next planks as well because there is tar all over them on the inside of the boat. He does not have unlimited money and I don't have unlimited time. Next time I see a boat with tar on it I will run away, fast. No tar and this would have been an easy repair, but now is difficult.

    What to do now? All suggestions welcome. Help.

    Here is the easy bit. Strip of plywood and epoxy should do the job.

    IMG_0544.JPG

    Now the messy bit. The right hand plank in the picture has the paint peeled off and I have planed most of the first veneer off. Still tar. The plywood edges have been cut back around 5mm, but are still black with tar.
    IMG_0545.JPG

  8. #22
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    I did similar repairs to a put put years ago. Planks were soaked with oil. We scraped out the seams between the planks (using a tapered hooked end of a file) then primed with an epoxy based primer (which stuck to the oily planks), then used a sikaflex fillet to seal the planks together.
    The sikaflex remained super flexible for at least a decade and it didn’t leak.

    Can’t remember the name or number of the sika product but it did and awesome job resurrecting a pretty stuffed old clinker boat. We did every seam on the boat and replaced a few planks.

    For the totally stuffed planks next to the keel we used an extra layer of protection with a nice tight ‘tar and tingle’ all the way from bow to stern.

  9. #23
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    Jun 2008
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    Bega NSW
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    Glad you mentioned Sikaflex. I have been thinking it might work if I clean out the seam between the plywood and the keel, add Sikaflex and then screw it all together using the nail holes for the screw holes. There is some old glue in there, but right now I am not sure how much tar got in. I have just made up a hooked scraper to do the job. Do you know what the epoxy based primer was? Anything that sticks to wood with tar (or oil) impregnated would be a lifesaver.

  10. #24
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    It was paired with the Sika product. Try their tech line? They are really helpful.

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