Tweet
So I’ve started diving deep into the prep work for the cedar conversion this weekend. Had a great conversation with Chris Parsons about the three votes he’s done. He’s a wealth of information. So far I’ve pulled the carpet and started on the hatches. I found in my case the glue was almost nonexistent. I also found that my hatches are way more square than other people have encountered. Once the carpet was off, The ski hatch definitely dropped down. But the gaps and the square we’re not bad at all. I decided to put a piece of half-inch coosaboard on top the existing hatch. You’ll see in the pictures below I’ve already made a prototype of the hatch top are using cheap plywood.
Here are my current questions:
1) Once I have faired the deck and added gelcoat how much will that build? I need to know how big of a gap to make now knowing the gap will get smaller once faring and gelcoat are applied.
2) On the rear hatch I’m going to do the same thing and add a coosa topper plate. The hatch is exactly half an inch low. Also the two angle bars that support the hatch have small adjustment range which will allow me to dial in its height in a very precise way during the final step. The thing I’m struggling with on this rear hatch is that when it was wrapped with carpet it was just a tight pressure fit into place. There’s no fastener actually holding it into the boat. Once I have a nice gap between the hatch and the deck of the boat how will the hatch stay in place? For those of you’ve done this project, do you add some sort of fastener to keep it in place and not move around?
3) Since I’m going to cover the existing hatch with a new piece of Coosa, I’m seriously considering doing away with the port-hole for adjusting to prop shaft packing. It’s so incredibly easy to just move the seat base and lift the hatch up I don’t understand why there was a port-hole there to begin with. Any pushback on this? Is there some implication I’m not seeing?
4) When it comes to bonding the new Coosa board pieces to the top of the two hatches, can I just use polyester resin to laminate them together or do I need any sort of mat or reinforcement between the two?
5) since the Coosa board will be smooth I can I apply gelcoat directly to the top of it or do I need to do a layer of resin are fairing for stringer gel substrate?
6) lastly I’m so torn between gel coding the deck and white versus black. I understand Black is more forgiving since I’m going to go with the traditional black and brown teak SeaDek design. What I don’t like about the idea of black is that black is less forgiving of surface imperfections than white will be. Also my major concern is that overtime the block will oxidize and become gray. This is the biggest part of what concerns me with black. White on the other hand shows dirt and any stress cracks or spider cracks will be much more visible overtime. But when white oxidizes it just becomes a hazy white and is way more forgiving in that sense. I know no one‘s gonna have the magical answer but I really I’m interested to hear you guys thoughts on this.
Can’t wait to hear everyone’s feedback on this especially those of you who have done this project before!
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Here are my current questions:
1) Once I have faired the deck and added gelcoat how much will that build? I need to know how big of a gap to make now knowing the gap will get smaller once faring and gelcoat are applied.
2) On the rear hatch I’m going to do the same thing and add a coosa topper plate. The hatch is exactly half an inch low. Also the two angle bars that support the hatch have small adjustment range which will allow me to dial in its height in a very precise way during the final step. The thing I’m struggling with on this rear hatch is that when it was wrapped with carpet it was just a tight pressure fit into place. There’s no fastener actually holding it into the boat. Once I have a nice gap between the hatch and the deck of the boat how will the hatch stay in place? For those of you’ve done this project, do you add some sort of fastener to keep it in place and not move around?
3) Since I’m going to cover the existing hatch with a new piece of Coosa, I’m seriously considering doing away with the port-hole for adjusting to prop shaft packing. It’s so incredibly easy to just move the seat base and lift the hatch up I don’t understand why there was a port-hole there to begin with. Any pushback on this? Is there some implication I’m not seeing?
4) When it comes to bonding the new Coosa board pieces to the top of the two hatches, can I just use polyester resin to laminate them together or do I need any sort of mat or reinforcement between the two?
5) since the Coosa board will be smooth I can I apply gelcoat directly to the top of it or do I need to do a layer of resin are fairing for stringer gel substrate?
6) lastly I’m so torn between gel coding the deck and white versus black. I understand Black is more forgiving since I’m going to go with the traditional black and brown teak SeaDek design. What I don’t like about the idea of black is that black is less forgiving of surface imperfections than white will be. Also my major concern is that overtime the block will oxidize and become gray. This is the biggest part of what concerns me with black. White on the other hand shows dirt and any stress cracks or spider cracks will be much more visible overtime. But when white oxidizes it just becomes a hazy white and is way more forgiving in that sense. I know no one‘s gonna have the magical answer but I really I’m interested to hear you guys thoughts on this.
Can’t wait to hear everyone’s feedback on this especially those of you who have done this project before!
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Comment