November 17, 2021

Arietta Phase 2-12

Wednesday

I began the day with a round of sanding to smooth the first application of epoxy on the deck areas.

After vacuuming and solvent-washing all deck areas, I applied a second coat of epoxy fairing filler, focusing on the repaired areas but also skimming over the existing gelcoat where needed to fill remnants of the old pattern.

During what remained of the day, I worked on the two scupper seacocks that I’d removed earlier.  Over the past week or so since I got the seacocks out of the boat, I’d made a few minor attempts to remove the remaining through hull studs from the valves, and had been soaking them in penetrating oil repeatedly throughout.  So far, I’d not been able to budge the old threads, partly because of vice problems and figuring how best to secure the valves during the removal, and partly because of age and sealant probably holding the threads tightly.  Now, however, it was pretty much do-or-die time, as I didn’t want to waste time on a lost cause.

Trial and error finally led to a clamping situation that held the valves securely enough against the force required to break free the threads, and some judicious heating of the pipes probably didn’t hurt either, though it took about as much force as I could muster to finally get the old studs to move.  But finally the job was done.  The valves were in generally good condition overall.

One of the valves had been frozen in the open position when it was still in the boat, so I decided to disassemble and service both seacocks to prepare them for reinstallation.  The stuck valve was really quite stuck, and after clamping the base to the bench I had to remove the bronze handle so I could use something larger to break free the tapered plug within.  Fortunately, the components of the valve were in good shape otherwise.  After cleaning out the old grease and other residue from the plug and body, I lightly lapped the parts just to clean up the bronze, after which I applied new Spartan grease and reassembled the valve.

I repeated the process with the second valve, which wasn’t as difficult to disassemble and was in similar condition to the first one.  New backing plate material was on the way, I had the new through hull fittings on hand, and soon I could think about reinstalling the valves to wrap up this item on my list.

Total time billed on this job today:   6 hours

0600 Weather Observation:  36°, mainly clear.  Forecast for the day:  Increasing clouds, 41°