Garboard Number Two Comes Off

Spent the weekend stealing a few hours here and there to get the other garboard plank.  I must be getting better with removing screws, or more impatient, as it came off on Sunday.   Maybe 35% of them had to have the heads ground off as they just did not want to come out.   

Once the plank was off, I had a good view of the keel, which is the part that has worried me the most. Despite the face that its got a lot of checking, the keel was in better shape than I thought, except for one thing; the keel was cracked, yep cracked.  All the way through about midships, and in the middle of the centerboard trunk.  The crack goes through the port side of the trunk right through the bad rot spot that I had been worried about.

Here we are with the second garboard off.  Not too horrible.

I started hacking at it with a scratch awl and vacuuming out any of the rotted chips. After chiseling back to get to some solid wood, this is where I ended up.  The black hole in the center goes in almost 4 inches.  

The crack runs from the top left of the chiseled out section to the bottom right.  Here, I've chiselled out the rot that was in this area, and removed the rusty bolt remains.  this goes pretty deep, into the 

Once I chiseled out enough of the wood. I was able to pull out what was left of the bolt that held the keel and the keel batten to the bed log (below)

Here you can get a better view of the crack, on the left side of the picture.  In the center is the bolt that used to be in that gap and that held the keel and the bed logs together 

Here is the port side of the centerboard pivot bolt hole.  Looks like at one point they changed their mind about where this should be, and the result is a bit of rot in the spall section between the existing and old hole.  Easy Fix.

most of the frame bolts are still in pretty good share with only surface rust.  They were all left long, perhaps because they were galvanized.  That's no longer an issue, so I intend to cut any of the accessible ones down to a more reasonable length.

the brackets from the middle ribs came off and revealed that they were probably the 3rd attempt at brackets, based on the number of cutoff screws  in the bed logs that area.  the remaining metal let to some rot on the exterior; hoping is doesn't connect to the larger section in the keel.  you can see the rot just at the base of the frame.  Also, you can see the crack in the keel in the very top of the photo

Here is the other side of the center frame, no rot, but several screws; will need to remove them and fill.

Found a good resource on how these boats were built.

I'm now learning a bit more about how the boat was built from a resource I found today.  It's a PDF of a magazine article from 1948 that discusses how to build a Snipe.  I found it on the site SCIRA Brasil site, but the original link would not display the document.  through the magic of Google cache, I was able to download a copy of the PDF, but it was confusing, until I realized the pages were out of order.  So here is a copy of the document that should open correctly in your browser AND all the pages are in order.  

This helped me understand that the keel is in two pieces, the keel and the keel batten, that create the rabbet that accepts the planks.  I'm also learning more about the right terms that were used when they built these in wood.  Like Bed Logs, never would have come up with that on my own.

Next time, I'm going to start the process of fixing the keel, I hope....

March update

We've survived the holidays, some redecorating, and the continued weeding out after the move.   We had visits from both sets of in-laws during Thanksgiving and Christmas, and Finley's birthday.  So there have been a lot of distractions from boat renovations.   In the last 3 weeks, I've been able to clean out the garage to uncover the boat, and also block out some time to get some work done.

This post is kind of a carpet bomb of photos, so sit back, relax, and don't forget about that tight, tight, hold.

Tasks I've been working on:

• Removing the Varnish and white paint over-spray from the interior of the hull.
• Repairing the ribs where rusted screws had either been cemented in, or where the screw holes were rusty pits of dust that would not hold screws
• removing the port side garboard plank, which is the worst plank on the boat.

Most concerning area I've found is this section of the keel, so I'm focusing on getting the other garboard off to assess the entire keel before I start reattaching any planks.

The port garboard is also in bad shape; every screw into the keel on the forward half of the boat is rusted and the plank split and rotted.  I think that the screws were too close the edge of the plank, set too shallow, and that allowed moisture to get to the screws and cause the rust and the rot.  Some of these screws were just pulled out with a pair of needlenose vice-grips.  Just push it into the wood, grab the screw and pull.  Kind of like a dentist back in the old west.

Photo below shows how bad the split and rot are in the port garboard.

now for the good news,  everything above the water line looks to be in really good shape.  The remaining photos show the interior of the boat as I'm stripping the old varnish.  Once the dull old varnish and the white paint are out, the wood looks fantastic.

Looking forward from the stern at the progress stripping the interior.  best method I've found,  Scrape off the varnish using a head gun and putty knife.  Then scrape the remaining residue with a plane blade.  It works like butta!

Area in the foreground has been stripped of varnish and paint, you can get an idea of the "before" in the whitish section in the background at top.