Thread: Restoring a Rainbow 12' scow

Sorry for the lack of updates.

Well we sat down and sanded back the mast, boom and spinnaker pole. They have all come up nicely.

The mast has what appears to be some fibreglass reinforcement around where the stays connect to it. This will need a little attention before varnishing the mast.

The spinnaker pole has begun to seperate so we will have to reglue that together again.

Some more history on it.

My dad found out that in 1967 62 'Balandra' won the Championship Series of racing at Mordialloc.

So I see the cadet is finished ,kudos, but what has been happening with the Rainbow?



Adrian

been a bit slow on the rainbow, put a patch on the hole in the hull but didnt take too well so now that we are back from the Cadet Nationals, we can do a few little repairs on the cadet and then focus on the rainbow.

Well,

How has the Cadet gone in club racing and the nationals - is your son having a hoot - and how is the boat holding together/performing.

I think you still may have some space to improve other performance of the boat further too!!

So tell us (er me) please!!!!!!

Er - maybe in the Cadet thread.

MIK

okie dokie then.

The hole in the hull needed fixing so the damaged ply has been cut out and a replacement piece has been scarfed and glued in. There was a couple of places where the ply didn't stick down so i'll be retrying those bits later this week. (Skandia week this week)

Once that is done I'll fill and sand to even off the hull on the outside.

Went around and filled the nails around the hull coz the old filler was falling out and started to repair where the bow and top deck meet as it has started to seperate. The only place on the whole boat. There is a horizontal split in the bow that goes pretty much the whole width as well.

Most probably put some light glass on it to keep it secure and seal the front bouyancy tank. The only problem is that it won't look nice on the top.

We are trying to keep the top "natural" and due to the patch and various gouges, the hull will be white.

No need to glass/fillet the chines at this time because the original glue is like bear poo on rabbit fur.

The transom needs a little work to fill the holes left by the fittings ready for refit.

The ply on the hull needs some protection eg several coats of undercoat to fill the cracks and put some oil (or something) back into the ply.

For instance the cadet soaked up alot of the undercoat so I'm not sure whether that would be the best approach or something else, maybe a light poxy coat like for the deck.

Boom is fine, just a sand and recoat.

Mast needs the glass around where the stays and trapeze are attached looked at but
the rest looks good so once thats done, a sand and recoat.

Spinnaker pole has seperated and while we don't have a spinnaker it is not a big problem, we still need to reglue and recoat.

Foils ..
Centreboard/Spitfire wing doesn't need much if anything at all done and the rudder is pretty much in the same boat

Well theres a little update.. more to follow

The two big areas where advantages are to be had is with the sails and the foils.

Sails is not only the cut of the sails but also the setup for adjustment.

Foils just have to be perfectly shaped with a reasonable surface finish.

But I'd wait and see how your son goes with the rest of the season.

If he can get into the situation of borrowing a board from one of the hotshots and see what difference it makes it can be edifying. They can cost quite a lot, but are easy enough to make with templates.

Michael

There are a pile of screws on the boom etc but have like corroded in the wood thereby making it extremely difficult to get out without breaking them off.

Does anyone know of a way to loosen them a tad ?

I was thinking a little water soaked into the wood might loosen things up a little.

Howdy,

One interesting engineering thing is that if you leave fastenings in the holes the compression strength of the timber is unaffected!

Interesting eh?!

Do you reckon they are glued in or just frozen or what?

MIK

Mik if I said I understood what you were saying I'd be lying

Anyway no not glued just been there since pontius was a pliot so I'd say just "frozen".

Oh well the boys have got some of the screws out maybe half of each screw. There are two options as I see them

1. drilling them out etc using the drill press and having large holes filled with poxy

2. Filling the holes as they are with the remaining bits of screws in them and move the fittings slightly to allow new screws to be used.

Any Ideas coz the 1st option sounds the best but I don't know how successful it will be ?

Option 2 is the better idea. Making bigger holes so you can fix smaller holes doesn't make sense in spars - and the epoxy won't be as strong as the timber it replaces - in terms of the types of load the spars will be under.

Sorry about being unintelligabelsdfle before. Just that having screws or nails in timber doesn't reduce the compression strength.

Michael

well theres good news and bad news .....

The good news is that I've done the hull, that is filled and undercoated it

The bad news is that once I turned it over to start on the deck we noticed where the deck was seperating. So then we looked at the condition of some of the ply deck and up forward there was a patch of delaminated ply, and aft the deck was soft enough that one poorly placed butt would go straight through it.

Also the front bouancy tank was actually a front water tank that is to say it would hold water better than it would hold a boat afloat

So upon further inspection the effort to fix these things compared to taking the lid off and checking out the complete damage and taking it from there was very little in difference.

Soooooo yup we took the lid off. See attached .

Basically it took little effort as the resourcinol (or whatever) had gone off in most places and even the fibreglass had decided to lose its hold on reality

Overall the hull is still pretty "stuck" but to be sure the suss areas will be filleted with poxy, holes filled etc. Then the lid will be stuck back on.... oh be still my beating heart

The daggerboard casing etc looks pretty good so not much needs to be done around there.

Just called past out of curiosity.
Been a while since any activity on the post, but looks like some progress has been made.
It's summer again, I still have no boat to bash about in. On the plus side I have managed to use the garage space to set up a complete motorcycle workshop. I have built 3 race bikes, but still have a longing to go sailing again.
One day