The Blandford Rebuild

Tuesday, 31 January 2012

The Blandford Rebuild - Cracks and Filler

Now that the first bout of sanding is complete, I spent most of Monday night going over the boat and touching up any spots I might have missed as well as fixing all the loose bits and pieces of woodwork I could find. There weren’t many, so it didn’t take too long – for the most part I just had to slap on some wood glue and hammer in some brass-plated panel pins with only one section requiring the added strength of two brass screws. Below is a picture of one of the areas that needed slight repair, as you can see nothing a few smashes with a hammer couldn’t sort out.

After all the little repairs where done, I noticed that there were noticeable gaps between quite a few of the boards, panels and other woodwork. I figured that if I was going through all the trouble of sanding the boat back to raw wood, I might as well fill the gaps as best I could. So after masking off the necessary areas with some tape, I set about applying a liberal amount of Oak coloured woodfiller I purchased from my local hardware store.

As you can see by the photo below, some of the gaps were quite wide but the filler seems to have done its job pretty well and I’m happy with the results.

Before

After

The woodfiller was left a couple of days to cure so tonight I’m going to start with the second round of sanding with the finer 80grit sandpaper which hopefully shouldn’t take too long.

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Friday, 27 January 2012

The Blandford Rebuild - Sanding, sanding and more sanding - Part 2

I had a momentary setback on Monday evening when the electric sander I purchased specifically for this project burnt out from what I can only assume is over-use. So, after rushing out and buying another one, I got stuck in again on Tuesday evening.

As I said in my previous post, although the fore and aft decks did take quite a while they were relatively easy to do as they’re just a plain ol’ flat surface - which is more that I can say about the interior of the boat which is a nightmare of little fiddly bits and funny angles. But at last, after wielding the electric sander a few extra hours this week, the end is in sight! Well, the end of the sanding anyway.

Now the question is what to do with the interior of the boat after all the sanding? My original plan was to just Woodoc the hell out of all the woodwork but I’ve since reconsidered. The main reason being because I don’t fully trust the boat’s seals around the various boards and joints (especially the centre board housing as I’ve mentioned before). So I’m going to have to strip off the old sealant and reseal with marine grade silicone which, being white, will look pretty ugly when contrasted against the nicely varnished wood.

So, I’m considering painting the floor boards white to match the silicone whilst keeping the cross-beams in wood. The picture below explains it a bit better:

I still have a few things to do before I can start with the varnishing, most notably installing the sealant, and there are also a few loose panels that I need to fix back into place. Once that’s all done, I can crack on with the varnishing and painting before flipping the boat over and tackling the hull.

Monday, 23 January 2012

The Blandford Rebuild - Sanding, sanding & more sanding...

I always knew there was going to be a bit of elbow grease involved with this restoration process, most notably the sanding down. The plan is to sand the boat down with 60grit sandpaper before doing the whole thing over again with a finer grain – this should hopefully result in a super glossy finish once we start the varnishing process.

I had hoped that I could get most of the sanding done over the course of a weekend or two, but after this last weekend’s attempt I’m not so sure anymore. My dad and I, each armed with an electric sander, started on the foredeck on Friday afternoon and managed to complete it in about 2 hours as there was a considerable build-up of old varnish laid down over the years.

Foredeck sanded (rough grain)

Saturday morning saw the completion of the aft deck which was thankfully a bit quicker than the foredeck. The picture below shows a nice "before and after" comparison.

Aft deck - before and after

Sunday we tackled the inside, getting about a quarter of the way through before calling it a day. There are all kinds of odd angles, nooks & crannies making it pretty difficult to enjoy any sort of head-way with the electric sanders.

I’m hoping that if I can squeeze in a couple of hours after work this week and spend some time this weekend, we should get done with the first pass. Hopefully, the second bout of sanding with the finer grain should be MUCH quicker.

Tuesday, 17 January 2012

The Blandford Rebuild - Initial Inspection

Ok.

Last night was the first real chance we had to thoroughly inspect the boat. After getting it off the trailer, I washed the whole thing down with a high-pressure hose loosening all the dust and bird crap off the deck. I also made sure to really blast the water along the joints between the boards to break off any old sealant that had become brittle and could potentially jeopardise the integrity of the hull.

After letting it sit for a while, we identified two problem areas:

There’s a leak between the centre-board housing and the hull – not a massive one, but enough to be a bit of a concern. So the plan is to fibre glass this area (both on the inside of the boat and on the hull) to ensure there’s no chance of any leak. Fibre glassing the hull will also protect it from scratches and dings when we’re loading it on and off the trailer.

Centre-board housing as seen from inside the boat

The other problem we identified is the stern storage compartment – there seems to be a small amount of wood rot inside and the majority of the seals are failing. The fact that there’s no drainage hole or bung for this compartment is not helping the situation. Also, it’s quite a difficult space to get to as there’s only one small access hatch which is going to make sanding a bit fiddly. Seeing as this is just a storage hatch and nobody will really see it, there’s no need to spend too much time making it look good. I’m going to rather ensure that this area is as watertight as possible by installing a bung so that any water can easily be drained and then paint the inside with some sort of epoxy. This should sort out the rot – or at least prevent any more.

Stern storage compartment

Monday, 16 January 2012

The Blandford Rebuild - The drive home

Right, first a little history...

I bought the boat from a guy named Ross whose dad had built it from scratch in the late 70's. Apparently, back in the day, people were far more handy than they are now and building a boat from a kit was not considered particularly difficult. Ross had kept the boat under cover for the last 6 years, suspended from the roof of his garage by a very clever systems of ropes and pulleys.

Considering the age of the boat it was actually in pretty good nick on first inspection, due in large part I'm sure to it being stored so well. I wish I could say the same thing about the trailer which unfortunately didn't receive the same care. The one wheel arch literally crumbled in my hands due to a not insignificant deal of rust slowly eating away the frame. With the trailer being in such a sad state, using it to transport my new boat home was out of the question. I landed up hiring a flatbed trailer and we had to load the old trailer onto the new one and then the boat on top of that. It worked out all right in the end but it took a bit of man-handling to get everything in place and tied down securely.

The boat on a trailer, on a trailer

After a VERY careful drive home, we unloaded the boat ready for the first step in the refurbishment process. But that's the topic for my next post :)