After the usual round of applying varnish to various parts of the boat, I took a look at the case side.
Here I have removed the peel ply and the result is pretty good. It will need sanding but that was expected. For now, I shall put it by the Rayburn to keep warm to allow the epoxy to reach full strength before I take sand paper to it.
After that I turned my attention to the transom. Armed with hot air gun and a scraper it was the work of only half an hour to remove the paint and varnish. I say paint, but I think it is a coloured varnish rather than a paint and you can see why it was put on. There are several damaged areas as well as dark areas where the wood has suffered water damage.
This is an area that needs some attention, at the top of the transom just to the left of the rudder gudgeon. Here is looks as though the plywood has been sanded too aggressively and that has removed the outer layer of the plywood. The exposed and rough grain will wick water easily and although no damaged seems to have occurred as yet, this area needs to be sealed to prevent water ingress.
This was the most surprising area. It looks to be a massive repair and I suspect that it was carried out due to severe water damage.
This is a section from a photo of Shoal Waters whilst she was still in the ownership of Charles Stock and you can see a large discoloured area to the left of the name board that corresponds to the repair in the photo I took this morning.
So, more tasks to add to the list. Remove any remaining varish, sand and fill the two, possibly three areas that need graving pieces. Carry out some stain removal to at least lighten the darkened wood. Then I will probably stain the entire transom just to stop it looking such a light colour and after that, we shall see.
Sa far an interesting morning.
Time for a cup of tea.
During my next break I sanded the transom with 180 grit sandpaper and then went tapping around to see where the soft returns were.
The green area is where I’ll certainly put a graving piece and the red areas show where I’m getting soft returns with my tapping. The top red area is a place where I’m tempted to put another graving piece rather than use the epoxy sealer. One or two of the very darkened areas of wood I’ll treat with Oxalic acid and try to bleach the wood a little, but other than that I think the transom will be lightly stained to even out the discolouring and then varnished. This will not hide the repairs and such, but they will be less noticable unlike with the varnish/paint which hid everything.
The two red area on the left will be left until Shoal Waters is next out of the water for maintenance and I can spend more time investigating and repairing.
Time for a cup of tea.