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Old 11-29-2015, 09:50 AM   #54
Art
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City: SF Bay Area
Vessel Model: Tollycraft 34' Tri Cabin
Join Date: Feb 2011
Posts: 12,569
Quote:
Originally Posted by manyboats View Post
Art you ever seen it happen?
Fear is easily propagated.


I disposed of a wood boat once. It was easy. But it was hard emoyionally as I designed and built it. 28' plywood.
Heck Yes! - Eric - In regard to " Art you ever seen it happen?" referring to my post # 47.

Back in the day (1960's / 70's) when I worked in New England boat yards, bottom-seam re calking was an often needed task before re-launch in spring. A good time to re calk is after winter on the hard as planks have dried and shrunk so there is room to clean out old calk and pound in new. Many a time I've seen boats floundering in their slip due to leaks in bottom calking. Back then we used a white fabric, blunt metal-chisel type affair with oak stem, and wooden plug hammer (mallet) whose face was wrapped in leather to pound in the new calk. Some of the bottom-to-keel areas were wrapped with tar and lead sheeting... then fastened into place over the tar with very close proximity copper or SS nails. Each time a wood boat was launched on sling lift the slings were left under the boat for hour or more (sometimes over night) with bilge pumps often going - until its bottom planks had swelled sufficiently to stop water from actually pouring in. After water ingress through seems had lowered then it usually took a day or longer for the planks to fully swell and hopefully stop all bottom leaks. A close watch on waterline proximities was carefully continued by us working at the yard. Often the wood boats newly launched did not return to their rented slip for days and stayed in slips near the sling lift launch site so "water line" observation was easy to accomplish. Plywood you speak of had little problems that way.
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