TOPIC: What lurks below....

Sometimes you just gotta wonder why some companies did some of the things they did when building these old boats. I am working on Roy Showalter's '63 Winner. The deck is the current project, and I wanted to share what was found. As usual on most old boats there is some tubes, braces, wood, etc glassed to the underside of the nose for support to stop flexing and to stiffen it up for walking across. Well, I guess Winner decided that wood was too expensive and instead decided to use cardboard. Not cardboard tubes mind you.. a sheet of cardboard.

The braces are wood pieces with fiberglass over them,but the wood is glass down onto carcboard! They coated the deck with some resin, stuck the cardboard down, laid the wood strips into place, and glassed them in. It isn't even glassed solid all the way across, just along the edges of the braces. Here are some pics. Enjoy!

And that was the "Deluxe" model!

Kinda gives you an uneasy queasy feeling in your stomach when you discover something like that, doesn't it? (Maybe it's just me, or the chili we had for supper last night.)

I found the same thing on my 59 GlassCraft. But it only had 2 lateral wood braces under the cardboard. (This reminds me that I need to beef that up)

Karl

A couple of braces and some Masonite under the cc deck.

No wonder it's wavy.

Well that's just crazy... I guess it was pre-foam core composite theory.

that's why I never look below, as long as she floats ...

And I thought my solid fiberglass deck was flimsy... The glass repair is lookin good.

Well shoot Doug - quit complaining.... Look how quick you were able to gut the thing! Just like pulling bones from cooked Salmon!

I'm thinking that they used cardboard to pad the deck against having the spars cause "shiners" or stress cracks on the topsides. I know that pro builders try to leave a tiny cusion gap between and structural member and glass skin. The wood is held in place with the tabbig and cloth of course, which has a tiny amount of give to it.

Just a thought.......

Bruce Gerard wrote:

Well shoot Doug - quit complaining.... Look how quick you were able to gut the thing! Just like pulling bones from cooked Salmon!

I'm thinking that they used cardboard to pad the deck against having the spars cause "shiners" or stress cracks on the topsides. I know that pro builders try to leave a tiny cusion gap between and structural member and glass skin. The wood is held in place with the tabbig and cloth of course, which has a tiny amount of give to it.

Just a thought.......

Yep, something to think about, as that makes sense. I am going to replace the cardboard with 1/4 oak sheet completely glassed top and bottom, and then add my runners over that. That way it will be more like a cored panel instead of the ribs straight against the deck. Last one I did like this was about 12 years ago and seem to have held up well even with a lot of walking on it. The bad part about this boat is that on most of the runners the front wasn't even glassed to the deck, only to the cardboard! How's that for support?? lol

One method I've used successfully to reinforce a deck is to make a grid of 1/4 inch plywood, with the plywood on edge. The grid pieces were about 3 or 4 inches high, and encapsulated in fiberglass mat and glassed to the underside of the deck. The result is a lightweight but very stiff and strong deck. If you round off the top edges of the plywood, you can neatly glass over them. Glass one end of the fore and aft plywood grid pieces into your dashboard, but let the other ends float. Taper the plywood pieces so that they are 3 or 4 inches high in the center of the deck, and taper to 2 inches at the ends.

BEES!!!!!! Lol. That’s a lot off bee hives!!! Yea, that’s some strange stuff there! Well, out with the old & in with the new.

If you have any pictures of your work - I and i'm sure others would appreciate seeing them. What spacing have you used? That sounds a bit what would be used on a vintage airplane wing - I'd think it's very strong


63Marlin wrote:

One method I've used successfully to reinforce a deck is to make a grid of 1/4 inch plywood, with the plywood on edge. The grid pieces were about 3 or 4 inches high, and encapsulated in fiberglass mat and glassed to the underside of the deck. The result is a lightweight but very stiff and strong deck. If you round off the top edges of the plywood, you can neatly glass over them. Glass one end of the fore and aft plywood grid pieces into your dashboard, but let the other ends float. Taper the plywood pieces so that they are 3 or 4 inches high in the center of the deck, and taper to 2 inches at the ends.

Bruce- Sorry that I don't have any photos of the deck reinforcements, but when I get my boat out from under the tarps this spring, I'll take some photos. The boat I'm speaking of is my Marlin, built in 1963. I credit my dad with the reinforcement idea, and he always seemed to have a simple but elegant method to do every project. ( He did used to design and build flying wooden model airplanes, so I think some of his methods carried over to boats). From memory, I think there were two fore and aft plywood supports, and two port to starboard supports. I believe they were all half slotted where they cross so that they mesh together and all remain full length. The deck design on my boat has a center raised ridge running from the windshield to the bow, so that portion was already stiff and no center deck support was needed. I notice that ,even after 47 years, there's no obvious grid pattern in the top of the deck, so I think we must have laid down at least two layers of cloth or mat strips under the plywood reinforcements.

Me and the wife picked up a '61 crestline mustang ( I hope I remember that right ), anyway the boat was cool looking and complete. And it was right. So when we started gutting it I was expecting to replace the transom, but then noticed the floor kinda moved! When you would tilt boat in any direction the floor moved! Gee, guess what we found? Yep, water! We tried to find where it got in out of curiosity, no luck. I was telling an old timer about it and his reply was, ( young man that's how we kept our boats upright, with water in the bottom ) Oh, my ! Okay I know chinese junk boats did but??? Okay, anyhow we started cutting the glass pannels off the top of the wood in the floor. It ended up setting awhile and when we moved it got sold. I kinda wish I would've kept it. We had all the dirty work done stripping it. Anyhow life goes on.