Bill, I suspect you know my boat way better than I do. This morning I ground on the keel to hull joint on the rear and still don't see anything too concerning, but I will be reinforcing it.

But what I then did was start grinding the bottom again and worked to the center line and the assembly joint. That joint was very wet. To say that a river runs through it would be an accurate statement. I cleaned off about 8' of the seam and it was all very wet.

I assume these boats were hand laid up and if so with the heavy woven roving used there is a high probability that there are more than a few capillaries from this seam to the core area. Add some hydraulic pressure and you have a tiny and continuous source of water even through 6" of what theoretically solid glass.

I will be filling and then taping with 6 oz. glass this entire seam using epoxy resin. But I plan to leave it open until I don't detect any more moisture. I find it interesting though that the surveyor's meter didn't pick this water up. I don't recall seeing her use the sensor directly on the joint though and this is a very heavy section of glass in this area, not to mention 35 years of bottom paint and gel coat.

As I was grinding through the blisters I was also thinking about the fact that this exterior skin is only about 1/8" thick total. Some of the blisters must go half way through that section thickness so that doesn't leave much glass left to separate the water from the core and polyester resin is porous anyway, so it seems like there are more than a few ways that water finds it way to the core.

Coastie - somehow I missed this post. I will defer to Dave Erwin who now keeps up the class website. Dave may have a way of doing this with the existing site, or an alternative such as creating a J/30 Google account and using Google photos and Google drive for storage. That way multiple people can be provided access rights to post information.

The forum is a good place to collect information but does not do a good job of index/categorizing it. It also has limitations on the size and number of photos that can be posted. When I helped Dave build the Class website in Wordpress which was upgraded from the old hard coded HTML site, we created the menu section under "Info" that did some of the categorizing you describe (e.g. engine maintenance, rigging, etc.). What could be done on the forum is to create a "sticky" post displayed at the top of this forum that would have links to various projects and posts. This would need to be manually built and added to.

Dave Erwin - over to you for archiving project ideas that Coastie asked about.

I think many of these boats are going to have a very long shelf life, so sorting out the peanut trail for all those that follow will be a worthwhile effort.

Here is the latest update video on my progress or lack there of.

J30 MaJic Carpet Rebuild Video Update 3

I am getting ready to test the use of a vaccuum pump to aid in the drying of wet core. Also doing hull reinforcement and bilge glass work.

When you said 350° I had to laugh because in my head I had the voice of Julia Child saying, "Now, preheat the oven to 350°..."

So the idea is to evaporate the water by combo of moderate heat with low pressure. Where will the moisture go?

I just made a collector that is simply a length of 1-1/4 pvc with a T on the top. The T has caps that were drilled and tapped for the 1/4 NPT hose barbs and the long bottom collector leg is capped and has a 1/4" NPT drain cock. I'm thinking the moisture will want to condense as it cools in the line exiting from the hull. As soon as I put this all to work I will add some images and report results. I really do not know if this will work, it just seems like it is worth a serious effort, because if it does then the drying process becomes massively easier, followed by much easier glass repair work.

350° is the no go zone for fiberglass. I really don't want to get anywhere near that value and I even kind of doubt with the heaters I'm using if that would even be possible, but we will see. My ideal core temp needs to get into the 120 to 140 range, I suspect I will need a rectal thermometer rather than the infrared one I have.

It just might work! We have been having a real cold snap in our area the last few days. Probably nothing compared to what most of you are used to, but certainly in the temperature area that can cause a wet balsa core to try and unglue itself. Nighttime temps down to 15°. So I broke down and dug out my big Mr. Heater and tented the hull off and stuck the thing inside running on low. The tank has lasted much longer than I thought it would and the key thing is that directly above the heater the surface of the glass is showing 115°. That is the high temp reading, but it covers about a 2' x 2' area and then drops off quickly.

The reason this is important is that if I can get an area of hull to reach that temp or preferably something over 120° then the process of boiling/evaporating moisture from the core under vacuum becomes much more likely. So with ambient temperature at something more friendly like 45° then reaching the higher target temps is realistic and manageable. I would also expect that the area that was suitably warmed up would be larger too.



We are in for it this weekend too, with snow coming that will be topped off with freezing rain. So the work will have to continue inside the warm shop. I won't be doing anything to this hull until we get reliably above the 45° mark. As soon as I have any kind of results with this vacuum drying technique I will report it, either good or bad.

Hi Coastie,
I have a very similar project I've been procrastinating on for #207. I'm in St. Helens, right behind the fairgrounds. If it'd be possible (once the snow melts) I'd love to come see your project. I'm at madmarshalls@gmail.com or 503 396-5290. Love to see your progress. Mine may be a bit worse as when I drilled some exploratory holes in the starboard quarter I got some wet balsa and some black sludge.

No great process at this point in time, but there have been questions about what I was doing. So I did a short update video:

MaJic Carpet Video #4

At least it is warm in the shop and things are getting done. I also now have a local expert to help guide some of the specific steps for putting this toy back together.

dg

Why are you trying to sell your vacuum pump? Was it the wrong style/CFM?