Wood Hull Repair Toredo Worm

[foolishsailor]

Awab,

Im not sure I understand your resistence to replacing the plank completely?

The amount of work involved in routing out slots in the wood and then putting in new wood, planing that wood down is vastly more work than making a new plank. You will also not be able to tell if you got all the toredos and the toredos dont move in striaght lines so its not like you can cut a piece of wood to fit.

Making a new plank is realtively easy since you can use the old one for a template. You can literally lay it down on top of a new plank and trace it.

Steps to scribe and transpose old plank to new plank

1. Remove bad plank
2. Measure length and maximum width and purchase suitable new wood
3. Lay the old plank on the new wood with the outside of the plank facing up. This is important because the wood will be tapered to allow cotton and caulking in the seems and you want the widest part of the plank to trace.
4. Take a tape measure and mark intervals of one foot up the length of the plank on both top and bottom edges with corresponding marks on the new wood
5. Trace the old plank onto the new wood
6. Take the plank off and put on a set of sawhorses
7. On the new wood extend the marks you made so that they extend inside the outline you made. These register marks are going to be used to tell you the angle of the bevel that you are going to cut on the plank
8. Take a bevel guage (worth buying one with degrees written on it insterad of the cheap ones) and measure the bevel on the old plank at each of the marks you drew on it on both the top edge and bottom edge. If you are lucky and the plank iis not from a part of the boat with alot of curve the bevels should be similar if not identical.
9. Transcribe all the bevel angles onto your new plank at the register marks you made
10. Depending on your desire for accuracy you can either bandsaw the plank to the line or as i prefer bandsaw just outside the line and plane to the line
11. You can go online to see based on the thickness of the plank and the bevel angle what offset distance for each mark.
12. Draw the offset at each of the register marks (it will usually be less than half an inch for normal carvel planking
13. Use or make a spiling batton out of a piece of fiberglass or strip of thin wood to connect all the offset marks you made at the register points. The batton can be as small at 4-5feet, all it does is connect the points to make a fair line
14. Using a hand planer or power hand planer plane the bevels leaving the bottom 1/8 to 1/2 of the board untouched
15. Your done. Fit the new wood to the hull and adjust as necessary with a planer

I know it sounds like alot but it really isnt and can be done in a day. It would be much easier to show it to you versus explain it and I am sure there are many online sources that can give you images.


Larry Pardy has an AMAZING book called "The Hull" which has the best visual images of the whole process. Worth buying as you are going to be doing alot of work on the boat.

[Blue Stocking]

I am beginning to think that the toredo is not the only thing being taken for a ride in this boat story.

[micah719]

Getting good timber would be his main problem, as he said.

Are toredos good fish bait?

[minaret]

Originally Posted by foolishsailor

I know it sounds like alot but it really isnt and can be done in a day. It would be much easier to show it to you versus explain it and I am sure there are many online sources that can give you images.


Larry Pardy has an AMAZING book called "The Hull" which has the best visual images of the whole process. Worth buying as you are going to be doing alot of work on the boat.

Good instructions. At step ten you might add some instructions on cutting a running bevel on a bandsaw. I'm always surprised how many people don't know how to set up a bevel arm and use it.

[minaret]

Originally Posted by micah719

Getting good timber would be his main problem, as he said.

Are toredos good fish bait?

Probably! We always throw them in a bucket of salt water to show the owner, it never fails to totally freak them out. The running joke is then that the bucket should be dumped in the bilge of your worst enemy...

[foolishsailor]

Originally Posted by minaret

Good instructions. At step ten you might add some instructions on cutting a running bevel on a bandsaw. I'm always surprised how many people don't know how to set up a bevel arm and use it.

Yea it makes or breaks construction speed with two guys running planks through a bandsaw and one guy moving a lever arm with angle graduations as the plank passes!

I figured the OP had enough on his plate without us ending up helping him design and build a workshop as well!

[bobconnie]

Sounds like to me he's gonna do it his way no matter what anyone says !! The way I see it if two or three wooden boat repair folks tell ya the right way to repair a wormy planked boat, and ya keep on sayin you want to fix it with a router and epoxy, then the guys a waste of your GOOD time and experince!! it's sounds like he hasen't the skill and or the money to do it right !! to bad as his way will end up causeing him to have an unsafe boat !! Ive been lucky haveing a steel boat for 25 yrs and now a solid glass one ! so no personal trouble with worms !! but Ive seen enought of them in othes boats !! they can be total destruction to a wood boat !! O well it takes all kinds !!

[minaret]

Originally Posted by foolishsailor

Yea it makes or breaks construction speed with two guys running planks through a bandsaw and one guy moving a lever arm with angle graduations as the plank passes!

I figured the OP had enough on his plate without us ending up helping him design and build a workshop as well!

Sure does, and I'm sure you're right. Don't want to make it sound more complicated than it is.
One of the scariest things I've ever done was cutting running bevels on 12" thick plank stock for the (failed) rebuild of the five masted lumber schooner "Wawona". We helped them build a power feed ship saw with 4' diameter wheels, the lower wheel in a pit of course. The power feed used 50 gallon drums for rollers. The timbers were much too heavy to be cut by any method but power feed. They were all too big to be acquired from modern lumber, that kind of timber no longer exists in this world. It was all reclaimed from old bridge trestles. When starting the saw it took 3-4 minutes for it to come up to speed, and when it did it screamed like a banshee. Nobody wanted to stand within a hundred yards of it, in case the blade broke. It was a 4" wide blade and a little rusty since it came from an old saw mill. To cut a running bevel on a plank you had to stand on the table, about 2' from the blade, and operate the bevel arm while someone else called out the numbers. Absolutely terrifying! I believe the saw is still there at the Maritime History Foundation. It was a great volunteer project, but there was never enough money or volunteers and she wasted away on us. Very sad.

[Blue Stocking]

An experience I'll never forget is assisting the shipwrights on the tilt head bandsaw at Mystic Seaport, cutting futtocks for bow frames for the Charles W Morgan.
Like you said Minaret, the movement of the 4" wide blade has a mesmerizing effect.
The futtock piece is roughed out oversize on its molded dimension, bevel marks are made on the sided face, and the saw head is pivoted as the material is advanced

[sdowney717]

forget about using copper, VERY expensive and it is only a barrier. This copper barrier has gaps, overlaps, which the toredo and gribble larvae can get by.

Think more of flexible polyurea, or polyurethane type coatings such as Dragon Shield and Sanitred Permaflex.
I reconstructed my wooden planked boat using permaflex and it worked out fine. It is coated inside and outside, was a complete plank tear off job. Mostly was able to keep all the old planks.

I figure it will also help if the hull got damaged to keep the boat afloat. Being so tough, less could penetrate? The hull might get broken under the coating, the coating more likely stay intact. Think if you hit a container or barge or underwater some type object the hull wont tear open so easy.

The other idea is a polyurea which can be sprayed on.

Coating of wooden yacht in Polyurea Sealing Protection system in the Galilee Sea - YouTube

Dragonshield Polyurea video shows how tough this stuff is!!
Polyurea would be strong enough that weakened planks would not matter as long as they were not really awful. Polyurea are so strong that even powerful explosive blasts will not penetrate the coating.

Blast & Ballistic Mitigation - Dragonshield Polyurea - YouTube

K5

I used this here
DIY Wet Basement Waterproofing, Finishing & Flooring, Swimming Pool, Deck & Concrete Crack Repair, Roof & Industrial Floor Coating

Doing it over I would be interested in using a polyurea which is sprayed on.

here is one bottom shot. Boat hull is coated with permaflex. I had to pull the boat and do a shaft log type repair relined the shaft tube with liquid tight non metallic conduit glued in with PL black roof flashing polyurethane. The PL Black roof polyurethane in a tube is an EXCELLENT waterproof poly and sticks well to most everything.

[minaret]

Inside as well? I'll just refrain from comment on that one...

[awab]

hello
why you guys always think money and skill or insurance is the problem.
Like the one guy says, one of the reasons is to find the right lumber.
He got part of the story right.
Awab is nearly to 95 % original from the the point she was build in 1958.
She is in a very good shape overall. I been running aground and been stupid enough not doing something against her exposed hull on some spots right away. After seeing the holes I took her out of the water and the toredo or whatever caused the little holes should be death by now.
Sure there are many possibilities to treat a wooden boat when it gets to his older age. Do you guys think somebody has a wooden boat since 12 years in the caribbean is so ignorant not do know some of it.

Nobody till now explained me why my way to deal with the problem should not work.

Like I said, I know having the right wood etc replacing the plank etc is one good possibility.
I would not have any problems with the repair in this way. I am a very good handyman.

And still Nobody explaining why the router - epoxy-new stripe of wood clued in etc should be impossible and not strong and etc.
Me and a carpenter replaced once a plank on awab some years ago in cartagena. The boat is build so tight that the only way to get the plank out was to destroy the plank. They have incredible people down there and it would be no problem for basically no money to replace all the planks I want.
But now I am in north carolina and have some ideas and if nobody is convincing me different I will try my way.

thanks again
peter

by the way-if you have not enough money-not the right wood- no skills- go to a country like columbia/cartagena. Lots of good people and affordable. From the east coast you can do it painless in some weeks.

[minaret]

The router technique is called graving and it is done all the time on non structural members. It could be done and would work fine as long as you mechanically fasten as well. But as stated before, it would require the same quality wood, just not quite as much of it. And it would actually take longer and cost more to give a lesser quality repair. Several people have told you this now. I can see that you cannot be convinced to do it right. You're planks will be very easy to pull after drying out for this long. As you have been told many times by many people, if you don't pull at least one you will never know the true extent of the damage.

[JayCall]

Someone earlier mentioned worm shoes. My first wif'e uncle built shrimpboats for 50 years in SE NC. White Oak keels and frames and cypress planking. The cypress is very worm resistant but the white oak keels are not. Every shrimper built in NC has a thick "wormshoe" on the keel to sacrifice to the worms. Part of annual maintenance is replacing the wormshoe with each hauling. If you take one and resaw, as Minaret suggests, you will see the problem with any repair other than plank replacement. One or two small entry holes, and when resawn, it looks like a Candyland Board game. Little random bored trails in every direction, never coming closer than about 1/16" to a surface but virtually the entire interior of the wood is gone. Sometimes the wood left between trails is almost paper thin. I just don't see where any other solution will work. Routing out a strip will not expose the entire set of trails and without doing so, the plank will never have its original strength. I also cannot imagine that suitable wood cannot be obtained in NC. There are still quite a few traditional builders there. Whether in the Outer Banks/Pamlico/Harkers area or the Wilmington area, the OP should not have a problem finding good wood with just a bit of effort. He should even be able to readily find some very qualified folks, somw 3rd/4th generation builders, that would help.

Minaret-on beveling planks, one of my fondest memories of many years ago was watching a bunch of old guys at my Uncle-in-Law's yard building an 85' shrimper with no plans or formal drawings. One guy would lay a 30-35' plank on sawhorses beside the hull, eyeball the bend and the bevel, take a hand plane and go to work. Usually took no more than about three tries to have a perfectly fitted plank. True artists in my mind and now lost art.

[minaret]

Originally Posted by JayCall

Someone earlier mentioned worm shoes. My first wif'e uncle built shrimpboats for 50 years in SE NC. White Oak keels and frames and cypress planking. The cypress is very worm resistant but the white oak keels are not. Every shrimper built in NC has a thick "wormshoe" on the keel to sacrifice to the worms. Part of annual maintenance is replacing the wormshoe with each hauling. If you take one and resaw, as Minaret suggests, you will see the problem with any repair other than plank replacement. One or two small entry holes, and when resawn, it looks like a Candyland Board game. Little random bored trails in every direction, never coming closer than about 1/16" to a surface but virtually the entire interior of the wood is gone. Sometimes the wood left between trails is almost paper thin. I just don't see where any other solution will work. Routing out a strip will not expose the entire set of trails and without doing so, the plank will never have its original strength. I also cannot imagine that suitable wood cannot be obtained in NC. There are still quite a few traditional builders there. Whether in the Outer Banks/Pamlico/Harkers area or the Wilmington area, the OP should not have a problem finding good wood with just a bit of effort. He should even be able to readily find some very qualified folks, somw 3rd/4th generation builders, that would help.

Minaret-on beveling planks, one of my fondest memories of many years ago was watching a bunch of old guys at my Uncle-in-Law's yard building an 85' shrimper with no plans or formal drawings. One guy would lay a 30-35' plank on sawhorses beside the hull, eyeball the bend and the bevel, take a hand plane and go to work. Usually took no more than about three tries to have a perfectly fitted plank. True artists in my mind and now lost art.

Truly a lost art. I have studied literally all my life and I could certainly never do that. Only a lifetime of building in that fashion can get you there, and sadly that will never happen to anyone in the first world again, even those who build for a living just don't build in that kind of volume anymore. I too would expect the Carolina's to be a great place for quality sticker dried timber.