TOPIC: 51 year old water and wet foam,plus ants.

i cut into the seat bases of my 1959 cutter jet de ville and i found solid foam soaked with water and full of ants,i had to vacume out the ant nest.
im still working at getting it out and so far i have about 100 lbs of wet foam in 3 garbage bags with alot more to come,after the foam is out ill have to brace them.

When yer dun John, air it out good, make sure it's dry, and DON'T PUT FOAM BACK IN!!!

Frank

yep thats the plan,lol,ill brace the seats with marine plywood,and im going to drill a small hole so that any water that gets in,can get out and down the drain holes

Oh man, I feel your pain.. really itchy digging past that fiberglass cut. We've been digging wet foam out of our 72 Aristocraft for a while. Now that she's got a good roof over her head she'll be able to fully dry out.

when digging out old water log'd foam...how big of a job is that?

when redoing the boat curious can one use the a spray in foam (not your menards specails) I mean like that of the one they use to insulate homes with?

Hi Matt,

There are a couple of good threads on iboats AristoCraft forum about digging out the foam and where to purchase replacement foam. They mention you need 2 pound density and that U.S. Composites sells it at a good price.

The task is not fun at all. We were lucky on our Aristocraft Nineteen the foam was wet (not as wet as yours) only from the transome to the back of the front seats. It looks like you're going to have a lot of digging to do if that's what was under your front seats.

We used a crow bar to get most of it out, now we're just waiting for her to dry.

mom of dog,im pretty lucky with this boat the seat bases are fully enclosed,the water didnt get under the floor,im going to leave the cutout there and make a hatch and make it storage,but drill a small hole for drainage.
im not going to put foam back in it seems just about any foam will (over time)soak up some water,and that doesnt bother me as much as it freezing and thawing,here in pa.
the transom is as hard as a rock,i found some small stress cracks,so i cut the top of the transom open and found out it was due to the inside of the splaswell not touching the plywood,and when the motor was cranked down tight it caused it to crack,im going to fill that void before repalcing the top of the transom .john