Commander 147

[ebb]

But Jerry you wrote the book!
Interesting that you chose balsa. Wood rather rthan plastic.
Imco endgrain balsa will conform to the minor deck camber easier than closed cell pvc foam will
But also, you could say, the balsa breathes which may help disapate air that gets entrapped
when laying it in place.
I took a little good balsa out of what I did and found that polyester in the original composit had penetrated the balsa very well - which you won't get with foam. With epoxy that isn't an issue.
Sweet water won't find its way into your job for at least a 100 maybe 200 years!

Carl's placing of too much weight outside on his Ensign recore is a good cautionary tale!
Commander's may be different in that the inside glass layer of the composit is not as thin as I found on A-338. The inner layer after removal of dead balsa and cleanup
would be too bendy to take any weight on it at all!

Not every boat has this problem.

[Commander 147]

Thanks Ebb

I think one thing that has helped on my project is that I filled the toe rail and then laid up 1708 biax and then a layer of finishing cloth on the underside of the area I'm recoring early on in my project. That stiffened it up significantly. Also the way I modified the bulkhead at the aft end of the chain locker made a huge difference in the stiffness of the bow area. So I'm pretty comfortable that all of the areas I'll be recoring will support the process pretty well.

As far as the balsa goes, I really wanted to go with the same material that was originally used. On the cabin top where I recored areas for reasons other than wet core (like hardware reinforcement and the new mast step I built) the balsa was in great shape and just as strong as it was when new. I think if you properly protect it from deck penetrations it will last indefinitely.