As stated earlier, I did all that myself over a period of five days, cleaning out the seam, epoxying the screw holes and sealing the seam with 3M 5200. Finally I rebedded the rub rail with 3M 4200 and reattached the "never needs varnish or oil" original stainless steel rub rail with half inch screws that did not penetrate through the glass into the cabin. I completed the project while the boat was in the water. You have to be careful to bag the stuff that you clean out of the crack, however, if this is done in the harbor. Taping a large plastic bag onto the hull immediately beneath the working area seed to work.
The cost of the above was the cost of the replacement screws and a couple of tubes of the aforementioned 3M stuff.
my buddy's renegade had the same sort of issue. he touched up the tabbing a bit, jammed in gobs of epoxy, and thru-bolted the whole thing with nice stainless carriage bolts bedded in splash zone on 12 inch (roughly) centers with nice shiny cap(acorn) nuts inside. no more worries...and it does look butch, to boot.
the bolts are a very effective method...take a look at how the deck is put on an albin-vega 27, for example. those boats are VERY well built...sorta the saab/volvo of small sailboats. bolts and mastic seemed OK to them, so i don't see anything wrong with the idea, myself.
jay spent about 5 hours total on the renegade to do a very nice job of it...for not much money. just another way to throw out there...triton 397 will get the same treatment.
That's going to be SO strong. Are you sure you need so much?
Course you may be going where the Arctic ice floes. Gotta remember the Ariel/Commander group held together pretty good over these many years years with just a one eighth inch butt join.
You could get the same strength you're seeking with a couple layers of x-matt. But not the rigidity. The deck and toerail do an excellent job keeping the boat in rigid shape. You could add mass with a nice teak rub rail.
338 has it's toe rail filled so that it looks like the underside of the deck fairs right to the hull. She will have a mahogany toerail added (therefor it is flat inside to take washer and nut) AND a rubbing strake.
It's not so much the strength we're looking for but a good backing for screws and a few bolts. If you look into toe rails on the Triton MIR site a Mark Parker (I think) added one in the same fashion I'm thinking. Except he makes no mention of backing in the toe rail cavity. Should give alot more security joggin around the side decks where it's wide as a tight rope. And with a little taper on each end it should look very nice. Can't afford teak, have to settle for mahogany. Of course we'll have to add a rub rail, mahogany also. It'll look good once! I've been planning on using such a long or wide block because I want to keep the screw holes OUT OF THE SEAM. I know- now I'm talkin crazy! A one and a half inch base on the rub rail should get the screws below the seam ( buried in sealant, of course) and yet allow the top edge to cover the hull/deck seam. So what do you think of that?
Oh by the way Ebb, you never posted here what you did with 338's seam. Come on then man-flesh it out.
G
I saw an Allerion A4(?) last weekend that had an ash rubrail that looked like cornice moulding. What's up with that? Tried to find some info on them via the www but struck out. I'll go back sometime this summer and get some photos.Yeee!
Someone had attempted to cure the leaks thru the hull/deck join where the s.s. rubrail was attached with tubes of silicone and next size up screws. By then I had learned that silicone soaks an oil-like substance into fiberglass laminate that nothing will ever stick to again. I dremeled every last bit of rubber and then some out of the crack. It looked like I had just about zippered the deck from the hull. Many places you could see clear thru.
Like you did, the cove was cleaned out from stem to stern. I laid mat across the seam and added another layer that over- lapped it and up into and around the cove. Remnants of mahogany were cut into truncated triangular sections about a foot long and imbedded into the cove with mishmash. Used cabosil gel to finish it off flush with the deck, as I said. In the cabin I force glued with carjack and 2x4 the cabin liner to the underside of the deck where it had pulled away*. The fill was finished off flush to the liner. Looks good.
The seam just sits there waiting for us to finish fairing the topsides. And after that bruhaha, a nicely shaped rubbing strake with the inside coved out on the table saw will be mounted over the seam leaving a breath-taking narrow stripe of the hull showing above it and under a very nicely shaped mahogany toe rail. With just enuf cove the strake will cup the changing convex shapes there along that sweetest of sheers. There is plenty of backing for screws and bolts.
The seam will NEVER leak again.
*any water that gets in thru fittings or windows will now forever sit and rot in the space between the liner and the coach roof. Water used to drip out onto the shelves.
With the new main bulkhead ready to go in I thought I better start addressing the 'seam' before I bury it behind new work. It was no surprise that 99% of the screws holding on the rubrail penetrated the hull completely. I was surprised to find that 80% of those screw holes had some delamination(for lack of a better term) in the factory tape job. The pockets ranged in size from 1/4" to 1 1/2" in diamter and from maybe one layer of fabric and resin to 1/2" deep or all the way through the hull gelcoat! I could actually stick my finger tip through one! Fortunately most of the cavities were isolated to the tape job itself and when ground out I could see the fabric imprint of the deck and hull and they were solid.
Yeah, a dremel tool does actually work quite well for grinding or digging out the funky stuff. I missed my calling, I should have been a dentist. Just put the bit in the hole and let it eat out the rot and when it finds good glass it stops travelling willy-nilly about. Just taper the edge a little to remove any sharpies and you're done, then its just 100 or so more.
On the outside I'm finding about half of the deck/hull seam to be soft and flakey. Same treatment, let the dremel freely eat out the funky stuff and prep for refilling. Only there I mostly ran into GOOD tape behind bad hull. Of course a few spots have nothing good about them!
What I'm wondering is if any of the other artic sailors have seen this on their boats. I'm trying to directly relate the pockets to freezing, thawing, freezing cycles and water seepage through all of those screw holes. None of the holes from sealed deck hardware had this sort of thing happening to the surounding glass, but the rubrail had no sealant behind it and plenty of water intrusion to boot I'm guessing.
Soft and Flakey, sounds very strange indeed. But if it was water freezing in the seam, how would it get started, seems like it could be so little water expansion wouldn't amount to anything? But there it is. Wonder if water in the deck laminate would do that too?
Your Rx does seem right on. Which is to stablize the hull deck seam with glass and wood first, then come back and excavate the soft and flakey out of there from the outside. With that wood backing you can cut away all of the bad stuff you want. When you've filled it you won't have a hull/deck seam no more!
There is a mighty metal dremel disk that is grit covered with heat relief holes near the rim. It is very aggressive and was responsible for my cutting thru the mat tabbing on 338. Needs steady hands and a good eye but it beats a burr 100% Costs, but worth every dollar. ($15 ?)
Because of the speed of the tool and ease of material removal you can even sculpt with it by drawing it over the work. In the seam. however, you can angle the thin blade up or down thereby undercutting the opening inside, insuring the filler will never come loose.
I went through about the same process as you are doing with the same results.
I then used copious quantites of 3M 5200, putting an approximately 1/16" thick bead around the whole boat (except for transom). The bead is the width of the stainless gunwale strip, so when the strip is remounted, it will cover the 5200.
In three years I have had no problems. On occasion a mooring will pull out a screw, but i simply replace it with a new screw, mounted in 5200.
My understanding that the junction for new boats is frequently secured with 5200. It is strong enough to do that. Where there is a significant hole,, such as shown in your picture, obviously the 5200 "fill" is more, but it is still 5200.
I had a problem with rust forming around some of the screw holes in the stainless steel rubrail. I would get rust stains running down the side of the hull.
I took off the rubrails, sprayed the underside with corrosion inhibitor and rebedded them. Didn't completely solve the problem.
The I added mahogany rubrails to the boat and put the stainless rubrails on the outside of the wood. I attached the stainless rubrails using silicon bronze screws instead of stainless screws. So far so good.
C'Pete-this is something you've failed to mention until now. Were you planning on hiding the rubrail until someone caught you? Did you feel some would think badly of you for changing YOUR Commander to fit the whims of your own selfish desires? Cast disparages on he who lusts for more wood?! I think not! Come now, ease your soul by the telling of...what ever...
Did you really find a 26' board of mahogany? A crafty 12:1 scarf in there somewhere? How did you fasten that beast? Any tricks or tips you can offer to the rest of us headed that direction? You know the big fear of having more to sand and varnish-will you have to pull your boat annually now? Tony G
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