Soft spot on the roof - Part 4

It’s Saturday! I had to stay home for the day, so Sam hired is good friend Vince  to help him. Their objective is to fix the corecel today. Go guys!

(note : I don’t really believe in that plan. Sam and Vincent together have the worst karma ever. I can’t recall a single thing they did together that just « went well ».)

They first mixed ¼ of gelmat (which is basically polyester resin pre-mixed with fiberglass strands) with ¼ hardener. This create a blue-green-ish mixture that has the texture of peanut butter. Sam first spread it directly on the fiberglass; then they applied the corecell over it. Although it kind of stays there just like that, a pressure must be applied on the corecell to make sure it is as close as possible to the fiberglass and that no air bubble remain.  Since they are working upside down, they cut wooden sticks of the good lenght and squeeze them between the ground and the roof. 

Waiting time is of one hour.  Guys are leaving to get some potato chips and beer. Realizing they have no beer opener, they tried to uncap the beer with the cradle of the boat. KACHING! (first beer open! Mmmm. Thirsty!) KACHLLLAKKK…!? Second beer is broken. KACHLLAKKKK!? Third beer broken. And so on until all the beers where gone and none had been drunk. In the end, I’m glad that it’s that part they screwed up this time. ;)

Looking at the repair after the pause time, everything looks good. Sam thinks they won’t have enough  gelmat to install the other half of the corecell.   Thus…end of the day! Objective not complete, but at least, so far so good!

Time spent: 8 hours

Purchases: some 2x1 : 5$

Total time spent so far : 18 hours

Total cost so far : 420$

Soft spot on the roof - Part 3

Amazing how big the boat looks like in this
picture!

Here we are again! In a few days from now, we will glue the corecell to the fiberglass using gelmat (a mix of polyesther resin and fiberglass strand). To make sure it sticks firmly, the surface needs to be perfectly clean. So today’s goal is to sand the remaining balsa and then clean the fiberglass with acetone.

First off, let’s be honest here : the fiberglass cutting created enough dust that our faces and necks (and hands, and backs) (and whatever you can think of) were itching like crazy. It took me 8 times washing my face before I « kinda start feeling » back to normal again. We bought a wonderful white one-piece working kit with a hood. Sam looks like he’s ready to star in a Sci-fi B movie, but we are really counting on that to prevent the dust from entering everywhere.

Using the Ridgid Job Max oscillating tool, Sam removed the thin layer of plywood that was stocked to the fiberglass. Worked great!  You really want that kind of tool if you star such project!

Using the same tool, he started the sanding job. Terrible! The thing was vibrating like crazy  but almost nothing was happening on the head. Sam went to buy another tool (thank you Fein!) that worked perfectly.   If any of you is wondering if the hype behind the Fein is justified, Sam can now convince you anytime!

Next step :  we did put on masks for toxic vapors. Sam applied Acetone on a cloth and washed the fiberglass. The few things still stocked to the roof did melt easily. (smell is terrible though) We waited that it dry outside. (smelt even outside).

Cutting the corecell

Finally, there was enough time to cut the corecell. We  divided into 9 pieces. Why 9? Well first because the shape of our repair is quite artsy. Second because the size of the repair is too big for 1 big piece of core cell. It needs to follow the bending roof and the core cell is too rigid.

Good work for today! We are a bit late on the blog ; i just realized the heater was on and that I had my winter coat on that day. Next time might be a bit more spring-ish!

-cass

Using tape to keep the pieces in place

The final assembly.  Triangles will help align them back perfectly while gluing

Time spent : 3.5 hours
Purchases:

• Oscilliating tool (Fein): 200$
• Sanding paper : 5$

Total time spent so far : 10 hours

Total cost so far : 415$

Soft spot on the roof – Part 2

Today’s objective was to cut the roof and find how big the repair needs to be. It will allow us to buy the new core (Sam is planning to use some corecell), fiberglass and the mat needed for the upcoming steps.
 

It's still snowing over here, so we brought a camping heater. Yes yes…it was snowing outside. Maybe it’s not a so bad thing after all that we are working from the inside! We didn't have a lot of ventilation to keep the warm in, so we wore a mask all the time since the fiberglass dust is very toxic! 

To keep the deck intact, we needed to cut carefully, not knowing the overall thichness of the balsa used. We used a Dremel saw max with a diamond blade, which allowed Sam to have the cut exactly the depth he wanted. He started  with a 1/8 inch depth and cut a square around the wet spot we identified on the first day.

When we pulled a bit on the fiberglass, the whole square just felt by itself. We could see the rotten balsa wood that was in a pretty bad condition.  It also confirmed us that the depth of the cut was perfect and that Sam did not cut through the top fiberglass layer – insert your favorite releaving quote here…!



We inspected the 4 sides of the square with our fingers; the balsa was so wet that by gently pressing on it, water was dripping out. We used a screwdriver as a lever and saw right away that all sides of this hole were delaminated.  Thus, we had to enlarge our repair zone… (quite a lot in fact!

The change in color shows where the plywood was

At some point, we discovered that the core was changing from balsa to plywood; which is a good news for Sputnik. Since we knew the winches positions had change over the years depending on previous owners taste, it is a good thing to know that at least, they are fixed in a solid material. From what we can tell, the plywood seems to be on both side of the companionway and seems to run forward from the cockpit to at least the mast, leaving only the top portion of the roof to be in balsa.


When Sam made his researches prior to this repair, he learnt that the joint between balsa and plywood are usually sealed with resin. We could see that joint, but the delamination on Sputnik’s roof was so bad that it created a gap big enough that the water reached the plywood too. The plywood was so wet that there is no way a fan could dry it. It will need to be changed as well

We used a paint scraper and an oscilliating tool to remove the balsa that was still sticked to the roof. We were afraid that putting to much pressure would rip out our last layer of fiberglass. This would make the repair much more complicated in the sense that it would then become visible from the deck. Quite honnestly, we don’t trust our aesthetic paint skills that much so far!

We opened and opened again, until the balsa was dry and that the fiberglass and balsa were tightly sticked together. In the end, the size of the repair is about 4 feet long by 2 feet wide. The plywood is still a little bit humid but there is no delamination. We’ll let it dry for a week or two and we’ll see if we need to open it more.

We cleaned up our mess and left with a piece of the roof, so we know which thickness we need to buy. That went well. Now, definitely no one is allowed to walk on the roof !!!

Time spent : 4 hours
Purchases:

• Dremel saw max : 120$
• Oscilliating tool : 125$
• Scraper for oscilliating tool : 12$
• Masks & glasses : 50$

Total time spent so far : 6.5 hours
Total cost so far : 332$

Soft spot on the roof - Part 1

Part one of the operation was to carefully remove the trims and headlining:

Before

during

...and after.  The shiny spot is actually wet!

Removing the headlining allowed us to confirm the problem; there's at least a 4 inches square section that swells and sweats.  We're guessing that the affected area is way bigger but this will only be confirmed once we'll start cutting open the roof.

Before going farther, Cass did an amazing job in wrapping everything in prevision of the soon-to-be mess dripping resin...

and after

before

The overall view. We're now ready to cut off the roof this weekend!

Now just imagine the fun she has wrapping xmas gifts!

Soft spot on the roof

So last year, when walking on the roof I realized that  there was a soft spot.  After many hours of gently knocking with a screw driver listening to the change of sound, I pinpointed the problem to one or two screws that fix the genoa traveler rail to the roof.  Everything seems to lead to the conclusion that our balsa core is rotten to a certain extend.  No choice; we'll need to proceed to the unavoidable re-coring of a portion of the roof before launching Sputnik into the water this year.

Since the deck paint on Sputnik is brand new, and that winter doesn't seem to go away in Quebec, we decided to work from the inside which will hopefully leave our beloved awl-grip paint job spared.

Fun is just about to begin! 

Way to bilingual!

When we bought Sputnik, we looked everywhere on the internet in order to find as much information as possible on our W.D. Shock Santana 30 (and not the 30/30 version).  Turns out we found barely nothing (where are you guys?!?).  After days of surfing the web, Sam finally found the original brochure of the boat, which helped us realized to which extend our boat has been modified over the years.

With such lack of information about the Santana, we thought it would be nice to start documenting our repairs and other maintenance so we can bring a bit of information out there to other Schock owners. 

Moreover, even though repairs are generally well documented on the web, we realized that every bit of information is helpful.  By any means we pretend to be experts; everything you'll see here will be our first attempts and failure.  We hope that by writing in English we'll help more people avoid the mistakes we're about to jump into!