OK Ladies and Gentlemen - Here are the photos of the work in progress on my 38. As you will notice the project has taken on a life of its own. Many other things will be accomplished this off season. I will give a description or play by play with some of the photos. There aren't any photos of the hardware removal phase because it was completed before I had a camera in the tool bag. I will say that most the hardware removal went way better than expected with the exception off the cleats and fly bridge guard rail stantion bases. I will detail these issues in the photos.
The previous 7 photos show the toe rails with the hardware removed. You may be able to see why I decided to replace it. Particularly in the last photo you can see how far the rail was sanded down around the stantion base.
These rotten @#$%^^^ cleat screws are bronze and about 6 inches long. They thread into steel. they were gaulded and rusted so severly that some were just never going to back out. I had to cut them off. I am assuming I will be able to relocate slightly and drill and tap new holes.
Bow pulpit removed. My windlass needs some machine work done so it had to come off. It was through bolted to the pulpit with no access to the nuts. At that point we had to remove the pupit!
With the pulpit off, a visual was available of a cross section of the toe rail and deck to hull joint. I found this very interesting and had never seen it posted any were before.
After digging out all the plugs covering the screws we found that even using the correct phearson screw driver tip did not keep us from stripping out the screw heads. ( We learned a little later that most of the screws were put in at about a 10 degree angle towards the middle of the board ). Many were also snappimg off. A decision was made to use a 1/2 inch plug cutter and cut around all the screws down to the fiberglass.
After all the relief holes were drilled the plug cutter sure didn't owe us anything. I used a mill file and hammer to keep it somewhat sharp and true. I would stock up on 3 or 4 next time.
The first piece of toe rail comes OFF !!!!
With the boards pulled off there was no stress on the screws. We were then able to back out the majority of the screws with no trouble. The ones that gave us a fight were cut off flush with a dremel and cutoff wheel
A Fein Multi Master was used to cut the outer cap molding at the board joints. This is an absolute must have in anyones tool arsenal.
Things are moving along nicely at this point!
Here are all the pieces of toe rail ready to take back to my shop for templating and fabrication.
My bare naked lady.
I will be happy to answer any questions and I may have some to ask of the forum. I have another batch of photos to share of other projects we decided to start during this round of restoration. Thats all for now as my fingers are allready sore and cut up from boatwork.
Chris Wade
1965 FFA under another round of restoration
PS Here is a very important tool for a job of this magnitude
