where do boats come from?

I'm going to be redecking one of the schoenbroad Singles this week. While i had the decks open I took some pictures. Im really impressed with how the older boats are constructed. There is so much work in putting together all the bracing, when its done right these boats can last forever and still be nearly as stiff and light as a modern boat. Its a shame so many of the older boats end up as low level club boats that are treated so roughly.

This Particular boat was formerly of the "Harvard Sculling Club". It was built in the older style with a wide stable hull. Even though it was never a super high tech boat, even when it was new, its still a handmade boat that someone clearly spent some time putting together. The same boat made now would be roto-molded plastic, and definately wouldnt be anything exciting 30 years after it was made.

Its impressive that as old as this boat is, and as much as its been neglected, the hull had only minor damage at the bow.

this boat is a sad panda!

Picture from www.row2k.com and the photo of the day.
Row2k

Pococks need new bows! part 2

After the fiberglass cured, I faired the bow with microballons. The glass is great for strength, but without a mold it almost never hits exactly the shape you want. Fairing is key to make the repair look good once its painted, and is usually most of the time in this kind of repair.


Another view of the faired bow, you can see how only in one small patch was fairing not needed. once the fairing was done the bow was primed. Without primer the different materials (fiberglass, microballons, fairing compound) would all soak up the paint differently, and the paint would have all kinds of texture.
The paint was in a can, but it was a can of pocock white, so it was a perfect match. If only the rest of the boat was clean you would never see the repair.

Pococks need new bows!

A couple of the pocock eights are still missing their bows after a rough fall with crew league. Both were broken off relatively close to the tip and it was simpler to build a new bow on to the hull, rather than try to mold such a small part and bond it on later.

I started by stacking some thick closed cell core and epoxying between each layer, to build a block bigger than the missing bow. This was roughly shaped, then glued onto the hull and shaped by hand to match the original bow.

Here is the foam bow attached to the hull, you can still see the epoxy between the layers of foam. The keel line is not actually correct, the pococks have a shorter bow with a noticable kick up in the final couple inches, but I was trying to keep things simple.

Since the outer skin was going to be the entire structure of the bow now, i prepped a big section of the hull to bond to. The Foam is just there to set the shape, it provides minimal strength to the final repair.

The foam bow is wrapped in wet fiberglass, and then tightly wrapped with bleeder and packing tape to compress the layers.
The boards and clamps give extra pressure to help the layers bond to each other and to the hull.

Plow vs Single, part 2

Here's the repair fresh out of the vacuum bag. It looks nice and clean from the pictures, but its still not "fair" with the rest of the hull. The Kevlar patch came out nice though.

The same repair with some more microballons and polyester on it. It got gooped on and then sanded back several times. The kevlar started to fray and had to be buried in filler.

With the primer on it was much easier to see how smoothly the repair would blend with the rest of the hull. This also makes the final paint come out much more cleanly, even when using canned touchup paint.


And heres the final fix. With such a big area and paint that I knew was not a match, it wasnt worth trying to blend. And it looked much cleaner to take the paint around the whole hull, rather than stopping it at the keel.



It came out pretty well, some rippling over the repair. But the boat will float!

Plow vs Single

This boat, believed to be a Shoenbroad (sp?) was donated to the club at the end of a season. Unfortunately it didnt find a home indoors and ended up living in a snowdrift for the winter. We think the plow hit it while it was covered with snow. 2 years later the new bay at CRI means I was able to rebuild the hull and get it ship-shape again. Now weve just go to track down the riggers...

To start the repair I laid up a couple layers of fiberglass against the hull near the damage. This gave me a panel that pretty closely matched the curve of the hull. I bonded the panel inside the hull to replace the inner skin. The brown around the edges is epoxy with microballons to fair the edge and make the inner skin watertight.

The Fiberglass is yellow because of the resin, its just regular 120-glass.
The second stage was to replace the core. This green core is a closed cell foam that is flexible and easy to cut. I matched the thickness of the original honeycomb core and weighted it down so that it would bond against the new inner skin and match the curve of the hull.

I was never going to exactly hit the hole in the hull, so i got it close and filled in the gaps with more microballons and polyester. I was aiming to still be a little below the level of the orignal hull, to allow for the thickness of the outer skin.

Here is the outerskin patch curing under vacuum. The boat is mostly kevlar, so I patched with kevlar, but I covered the patch with fiberglass to hopefully make final sanding easier. (Kevlar frays when you try and sand it. This makes it very tough but also hard to fix)