And so it Begins: The Teak Deck Removal Project

[bletso]

Now that looks familiar!

[minaret]

Look at Coosa board.

[weavis]

Ask Minaret. His knowledge and experience in boat building is amazing...

[Zach]

At least now you can remove the teak real quickly, screws and all...

Are you going to haul her up and put staging around her, or finish the job in the water? If you do in the water... Remember that a floating work barge is a possibility, and staging can be built on work barges. Get a GFI dongle to plug in your drop cords...

If you are going to do it in the water, the process looks a little different... as you have to do the bow and stern first so you can keep her tied up and have somewhere to get on and off the boat...

So long as you break down the areas that you are working to no more than 10 feet, you should be able to roll through each 10 foot area in a 3 day cycle and get back to gel coat.

Grab a metal cut off wheel for a mini-grinder to cut the top skin off. Works 10x faster than a vibrating tool.

Sacrifice a skill-saw blade for the area around the toe rail and cabin top. Do some exploring to see what the taper is for your core, as some boats aren't cored an inch or two away from the cabin sides... Which is very nice, you can carpet tape some plywood strips down to keep the solid glass area from being touched. Saves a lot of sanding work as an "oops" with the grinder is much more difficult to ruin anything that is already pretty looking.

You can speed up your project a lot with denatured alcohol. If you open up an area big enough to use a 7 inch grinder, a half a gallon or so of denatured alcohol onto what is left of the balsa after scraping out the area evaporates off "enough" water that the disks don't clog as bad. Just keep the disk tipped up about 10 degrees and try to throw most of the tall stuff with the grinder... and don't touch the glass until you have done all the balsa. Keeps the tips of the grit sharper longer. Don't get up to the edge of anything, unless you are using a mini-grinder.

If you have shore power, you can get 5 or 6 250w brooder lights and their clamp housings, and build a light weight saw horse 5 or 6 feet long with 1x1 scraps, to point at the area under the overlaps at the deck edge and cabin sides. Keep the bulbs 5-6 inches off the deck... Once you get the surface temp up to 120f or so for a few hours you can start drying out the area under it real quickly.


Cheers,

Zach

[carlheintz]

Great pics.
Before you go and rip up all the decks at one time and do the major destruction on everything remember that the decks are an integral part of the structural integrity of the boat itself. Once you rip up everything, you may be putting tremendous stress on the bottom fiberglass layer.

I would suggest that you may wish to reinforce that underneath the bottom layer ( in the boat itself) Beams across to support the lateral stress are particularly important. Vertical support of the cabin is also important. And, don't forget the stresses placed upon the deck by the mast, even if it is keel stepped. Some reinforcement before a major rip out might be cheap insurance. Get some cheap 5/8 inch ply and some 2/4's and shims and create a support structure before ripping everything out. Otherwise you might have a very, very expensive and disastrous collapse.

[a64pilot]

Oh Sh**

I don't know squat, but looking up Coosa board, it sure looks good. So therefore I guess it ain't cheap is it?
Whatever you get, make sure it cannot absorb water, anything that can, eventually will. I do not think plywood is a good answer, surely if nothing else it's heavy.
Reason for Balsa I'm sure is weight, the Coosa board looks lightweight, and has significant structure, maybe delete that middle layer of glass that is there now as the Coosa board is already glassed?

[SailRedemption]

Originally Posted by SV THIRD DAY

So here is the "New Core" material I'm looking at using rather than marine plywood.

Core-Cell A500 Plain Foam Sheets

Any thoughts, Warnings, affirmations?

Hey Rich, looks fun!

Re core cell, my 1984 Kaufman 47 has very little coring, only in the deck and only where hardware isn't placed. That said, I redid some deck prisms on my decks and when I removed a leaking one, the core cell was just as dry and hard/stiff as can be. Remember, this is 30 year old stuff too so I can imagine that it is better now. Much lighter than comparable plywood and is impervious to rot.

If not getting that(which I would recommend), I saw a synthetic honeycomb type coring material somewhere for bulkheads for boats you could look into. They probably have a material for decking too I would think..

Ronnie

See more @ redemptiverepair.com

[SV THIRD DAY]

So far...so Good.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQVW...ature=youtu.be

[Kenomac]

Originally Posted by SV THIRD DAY

So far...so Good.

How do I subscribe to your channel and send you money?

[SV THIRD DAY]

Originally Posted by Kenomac

How do I subscribe to your channel and send you money?

My wife asked me if I know how to put a hat on my head straight...
Sheesh....the abuse I take....

Just finished the port side and am now starting the screw removal process followed by belt sanding off the goo....

Why am I a boat owner again......

[zeehag]

rich you look to be having some realll fun. and i so love teak decks. wish i had em, glad i dont have the maintenance issues of original taiwanese teak decks.
just so you donot feel alone in chinese puzzleville, i am also effecting changes and creating new things with birdee here in mazatlan. might as well as long as i am here for repairs i may as well do so.

[SV THIRD DAY]

Well the project is coming along nicely.
The teak is gone and we have also wire brushed with the grinder all of the black adhesive off the deck to expose the fiberglass deck. The wet areas are cut out (a very small area of the overall deck) and now we are getting close to the fun of Epoxy and Fiberglass.

I do have a technical question that I am researching that I will throw out to the experts. I need to put a few 2-3 layers of fiberglass down on the deck to give back some rigidity that removing the teak took away. What I'm questioning is what weight of cloth to use. This is a flat big surface. I've had recommendations of 28oz (which seems a bit heavy to me) followed by a 10oz or 12oz.

Any recommendations from the group?


This photos shows the grinder with the wire brush attachment that we found to be the best way to both remove the black adhesive and etch away just enough fiberglass to give a nice clean surface ready to lay new epoxy and glass down on.


I'll tell you right now, without my 17yr old son busting his rear end, this job would be a LOT harder. Here he is prying up the top fiberglass layer over a wet core area so we can dig out the potting soil. You can see some core test holes drilled in the deck with a 1" holesaw to find where the wet ends and dry core begins. Oh and yes, those are safety Crocs he is wearing.



Ah...the famous wet core shot. Out it comes. In the background you can see where we removed the wet core around the heater stack and that area is ready for the Corecell to be epoxied in place.

[weavis]

A 17 year old willing to help dad do this.

Kudos Rich... You have a great son..

[SV THIRD DAY]

Originally Posted by weavis

A 17 year old willing to help dad do this.
Kudos Rich... You have a great son..

Well I am paying him $10/hr as his summer job in addition to room and board. Do you know how much food a 17yr old kid working out twice a day with the football team can eat...sheesh. But by now I think that job flipping burgers and McDonald's probably sounds a lot easier...ha ha

In truth working along side him while listening all day to radical right wing tea party talk radio has been a blast...

[UNCIVILIZED]

Glad to see things coming along. And that you & your son get to spend some quality time together. I know that I wouldn't trade the memories of sailing & playing on boats with my Dad for anything.

As to tech tips, & rebuilding. Keep in mind that stiffness goes up to the cube of thickness, so doubling something's thickness makes it 8x as stiff. With homogenous solids anyway, it's slightly less for cored items. But you get the idea.

Also, there are some good glassing tips in some of Minarets posts, such as the one where they rebuilt the keel sump/stub on a boat a few months back. Including some great pics of how to plan & prepare one's laminate stack.

Good luck, & thanks for sharing these memorable moments with us!