The green is gelcoat. Will a heat gun help melt the glue on the blue/black stripes?Getting close to finishing up my initial work on the boat. I have a couple things I need to do now and asking for some suggestions:
1) Rudder refinish - I've sanded down the rudder and tiller and sprayed several coats of exterior marine varnish on them. The look though, is not great. The wood looks more oak than mahogany. So, I'm considering just painting them white. Any suggestions for paint and finish to use? Also, matte or semi-gloss?
2) The stripes on the boat appear to have a black taped on overlay that's peeling badly. It does not appear to be under gelcoat, although the green base stripe may be. What is a good way to remove the peeling stripes?
Definitely! Makes fast work of removing the old peeling faded vinyl stripes. Revealing the shiny gelcoat below. Kinda like the two-tone green now, LOL!The green is gelcoat. Will a heat gun help melt the glue on the blue/black stripes?
"A Quote for The Ages..."Nothing will ruin a good day of sailing faster than a ticket on the way home for no lights or signals, LOL...
I'm not an expert in repairing that spot, but it seems a custom-fit piece of hardwood epoxied in place would do it.And here is a closeup of the fingertip sized divot I'll need to repair:
West System Six 10 would probably work to fill that divot. Much easier to work with and sand than Marine Tex.And here is a closeup of the fingertip sized divot I'll need to repair
Always on my shelf. You could also use it to fill the cracks in your wooden rudder. Use a plastic squeegee or credit card and coat the whole thing, then sand and paint or cover with spar poly (my preference over paint)West System Six 10 would probably work to fill that divot. Much easier to work with and sand than Marine Tex.
It's a two part gap filling thickened epoxy (doesn't run) that you apply using a caulking gun. I've used it for filling gaps and it works great.
- Andy
Curious to hear from Tag on his experiences with his dolly in water and what key factors he's found helpful to mitigate floating.
Did you happen to see my response earlier this morning saying, "I wouldn't trust those 22° PVC joints, as I've had them crack open"?A bit concerned about the PVC joints ability to handle the stresses of the 125+ pound boat under load. I suppose I won't know until it's tested. I think the small 22 degree elbows are likely the weakest point. Had to have those to increase the angle of the elbows so that the uprights are angled close to the boat hull profile. I may wrap and connect a rubber Fernco over that joint to help.
I'm working through the axle details. That's by far the most complex problem at the moment due to my self imposed requirement that my axle ends have to be hollow in order to accomodate a push pin type stay to secure the wheels. If I wanted to use 5/8 inch threaded rod, those are readily available and at various lengths.
However, since I need a hollow tube axle, preferably aluminum for light weight and ease of working with, drilling holes, etc, I'm experiencing a challenge finding aluminum tubes longer than 36 inches. So, my solution is to just have axle ends (similar to the dynamic dolly) and not a single end to end axle. That also poses challenges as to how to stay the axles themselves to the PVC that covers the axles. The solution I'm working on for that is that I found a 4 foot aluminum handle in my shop that is designed to work with a paint roller. It turns out that the 3/4 inch aluminum tubes fit pretty well right inside that handle. So, now I have a continuous axle assembly through the PVC that makes up the rear sling assembly.
Once my wheels get here, and I can know exactly how much axle area I need, I'm going to affix the two axle ends into this 4 foot "connector" tube with more push pin connectors.
No worries. I was thinking same thing. If the collar of the elbow fittings were deeper, I'd feel better about the joint's ability to hold up, but I have reservations and your experience backs that up. I'll probably go ahead and test it but from what I can gather the PVC "cement" solvent doesn't really fuse the parts together as much as it glues one surface to another. I'd feel better if one surface was actually fused into the other.Did you happen to see my response earlier this morning saying, "I wouldn't trust those 22° PVC joints, as I've had them crack open"?
After some rare re-consideringI deleted the comment thinking, "Discouragement wouldn't look so good, starting out on this project".
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