110 Cookson Lane | Whitefield, ME 04353 | 207-232-7600 | tim@lackeysailing.com
Sailmaster 131 | Wednesday, August 28, 2013
Beginning on the port side, I continued work on the deck repairs, opening several additional areas to remove the core within. One of the worst from the beginning had been the port poop deck, which was clearly soft and debonded. Removing the top skin confirmed what my tests had shown. I removed the old core with ease, and cleaned out around the edges as required, and, later, sanded clean the exposed inner skin and ground tapered bonding surfaces on the adjacent decks.
I also opened two smaller areas further forward on the port side, near a spot where I'd found a void, and in way of the chainplates. The core inside the mid-deck cutout was generally sound, with some discoloration where the void had been. I eventually enlarged the chainplate cutout to allow me to remove all the delaminating plywood that had been installed there around the chainplate slots.
After removing all the old core and reaming out beneath the edges as needed, I sanded the inner skins clean, and ground tapered bonding areas on the adjacent decks around each of the openings.
Meanwhile, I wrapped up work on the starboard poop deck, which I'd opened previously, and prepared this area in the usual way, along with a smallish area near the forward end of the starboard cockpit.
An area of the starboard deck, beginning on the foredeck and wrapping around the cabin trunk and aft down the side (including the chainplate area) was one of the largest suspect areas I'd found during my deck inspections. After cutting around the perimeter of the previously-marked area with a saw, I found that I could easily remove most of the top skin, which had debonded from the core beneath. The only areas that were bonded showed up as white on the core, remnants of the laminate that had actually been attached rather than loose.
Similarly, I found that the core was poorly--or not at all--bonded with the inner skin over most of this area. While the core was largely intact, it simply hadn't been well bonded to either surface during construction. Once I'd removed most of the core from the open area, I found a need to extend the opening aft a bit in order to take care of additional areas where the core was unbonded from one or both of its skins. I eventually reached sound, well-bonded core at all edges.
After reaming out the loose core from beneath the in edges, and otherwise preparing the opening, I sanded the exposed inner skin, and ground the usual tapered bonding surfaces around all sides of the area.
The only area remaining was the bridgedeck in the cockpit. All the signs pointed to this being an oddball mess within, but I didn't know what I would find. After cutting around the perimeter of the area I'd earlier marked, I removed the entire top skin with ease, as it was essentially completely not bonded with whatever was beneath. This revealed a large piece of cheap plywood core, to which the exposed plywood inside the cabin was secured with bolts and screws. The balsa core on each side of the plywood was loose and in poor condition.
While it wasn't good, at least the findings hidden within the deck began to explain--in a manner of speaking--the exposed plywood beneath the bridgedeck in the cabin, which had seemed odd to me but, without direct experience with the class, I'd not been sure whether this was how things were built or not. Clearly this was all part of some previous but ill-conceived repair to the area.
My first step was to remove the plywood core from above. This was held in place with four bolts through the lower section of plywood. While the nuts were rusty, I was able to unbolt the piece easily enough, after which I removed it and cleaned out the surrounding core from the area.
For now, I left the plywood beneath in place, as the centerboard winch was bolted to it, and also was supporting it--along with the entire bridgedeck. I'd soon remove this, and effect a repair--a rather significant repair/reconfiguration at that, but at the moment I simply ground the bonding surfaces around the opened area to prepare it for the work ahead. I left the inner surfaces alone for later attention.
Total Time Billed on This Job Today: 7 hours
