J/30 Class Association Forums J/30 Forum The Boat, Sails and Equipment A River Runs Through It

This particular part of the project was pretty fun until I moved the scaffolding a bit and disturbed a bees nest and got bit. It is way more fun and much easier working on a vertical surface than anything on the bottom of the boat. I started by making a cardboard template, because that allowed me to bend it and mark it for various details. I started by cutting the hole in the cardboard for the exhaust and then just went from there. There are some beveled areas next to the rudder reinforcement that had to be dealt with and some stuff along the bottom edge where the hull and transom meet. My plan was to use the cardboard template to get close and then just do the fitting on the high density core with any gaps getting filled with thickened epoxy. So once the cardboard template fit I went to the bandsaw and cut the piece out and drilled the hole for the exhaust slightly oversized, again with the plan that the thickened epoxy would extrude into any gaps and where it didn't I would backfill.

Once everything was fit my plan was to use a large hand screw clamp to hold the bottom edge in place to start. I had predrilled some holes through the inner skin of the transom and once the insert piece and the inner skin was buttered up, I clamped the bottom in place and then went up inside and used some self drilling screws to clamp the hard core into place against the inner skin (the screws were from the inside of the boat out into this core). The thickened epoxy extruded as expected and the screws had to be tightened a 2nd time to fully pull the core firmly into place. Then I back filled any areas that didn't have enough material in them and tapered the edges a bit between the core and the balsa core. I used my gloved finger to force a bit more epoxy around the exhaust to really seal it up. I also noticed that my exhaust tube is fiberglass, so maybe it was replaced at some point in time. So for sure I will have a very good bond between the new hard core material and the exhaust tube.

This repaired area will be incredibly strong and watertight when this all gets glassed over. There will be some fairing required to make this all look good and to my surprise when I was looking and planning for that part of the project I noticed that the transom wasn't really all that flat in the first place. You would have to put a straight edge on it to see the slight curve, but it is curved.

So just a bit more easy work to do on the transom and then it is back to the dungeon, grinding and recoring. grinding, grinding, more grinding...................







One thought that occurred to me as I was using some of the mooched scraps from my brother's boat plant, if you have a boat builder in your area it might be worth the trip to see if you can buy some of their core scraps. This stuff is expensive so it may be possible to work a deal to get some of their off cuts and waste. Don't be too surprised though if what they have left is pretty small stuff, they don't like to throw this stuff away.