Removing the bottom is a pretty straightforward procedure. With the proper tools, it doesn’t take much time at all. It can be done in a day.
The basic procedure is to abrade away the wood at each screw head, and back out the screws in the main frames, auxiliary frames, keel and chines. The other screws, in the intermediate frames, and those holding the inner planking to the outer planking, can remain.
The trick is to get all of the screws you need. Invariably you will miss a few that will show up when you get the pry bar out to take the bottom off. Be patient and don’t tear anything up. Just keep taking them out til you get them all. Then the half bottom lifts off, easy as pie!
Each half of the bottom can be lifted off as a unit and saved for later review. The planks on one side can be taken off individually to be used as patterns for the new bottom.
The tool of choice for abrading the wood at each screw head is a 4-1/2 inch grinder with a wire rope wheel. As you might imagine, this destroys the old bottom planks. So you can only do this if you’re not preserving the old bottom planks. But why would you be replacing the bottom if you weren’t going to use new wood? Some would argue that you should preserve as much of the original planking as possible, but I can’t see the logic behind putting back 60 year old, tired wood. We’re replacing all the planking and bottom frames with new wood.
As you might imagine, going after all the screw heads with a grinder will stir up quite a bit of dust. So the first step was to rig up a tent around the boat to contain that dust. I didn’t want it going all over the shop. I was able to set up my tent so that it enclosed one of my air filtration devices, so I could filter out a great deal of the dust that I generated.
I also wore a tyvek suit and a respirator during this operation.
This is really cool. I love seeing the skeleton of the boat.
Next step is to take out the old bones, err-frames, of the boat and replace them with new white oak frames. It’s coming soon!
The more I read of this, the more COMPLICATED I realize it is! In the photo of the “finished” product: the boat is quite beautiful…
Thanks Margie. I’ve taken a couple more pieces off the boat since that picture. Will start showing photos of new wood being added back soon. Annie helped me build a box for soaking wood the day she got here. I’ll post about that soon.
Hi Tim, Really enjoying your posts. Looking forward to seeing you at the Wooden Boat Show. Will you be exhibiting? Emory now has a big church in Cedar Rapids……a big challenge! Bob’s church is close by.
Thanks Tom. I won’t be exhibiting this year. Hopefully next year I’ll show the boat I’m working on now.
It’s time for an inspection by Sadie. the Wonder Dog.
Sadie the Wonderdog tells me she’s glad to hear from an admirer! She would like people to know that she is always on duty and inspecting around the shop. She is kept busy by skinks and bugs, but manages to monitor the progress on the boat too. I’ll be sure to include her in an upcoming post.