Pacemaker Boats

[leokow]

Terry, I like the new boat alot ,and here comes the but, the guy that had it before me had a bad habit of making holes and then not filling them in when he moved something. Also there are numerous places on the edges of the gunnels that have deep chips in them ,fiber isn't exposed but it resembles a deep chip in a glass bottle, smaller than a dime in diameter.
Now the biggest problem , the new boat has a hardtop on it,which is OK, with me, cause it keeps the deck under it very dry, problem lies in the deck, it seems to me to be delaminated from the core material, there are several places where pressure results in the deck indenting.It seems to be dry internally ,at this time . I'm not going to fool with it now however in the spring or early summer I'd like to repair it. I know one way is to drill some holes in the upper layer of glass and tap a hole to recieve a piece of pipe with a funnel attached, the higher the funnel the more pressure exerted on the epoxy to go into the void until it comes out the vent hole.Do this untill the deck is reglued to each other. I don't want to cut the floor out, but I'd like to do it once the right way.Any tips? Now I think I can fill the chip holes with gel coat the way you described how to take care of overspray.The thru holes ,I think I can get behind them with some glass to form a patch then fill the outside with gelcoat. The deck I'm gonna rely on you for the best way. Thanks...Leo

[changeofpace]

Leo, The way you described is one way, but you might not get the resin to penetrate the fiberglass or balsa core in all areas. The best way is to remove the floor (the top section, leaving the core) in the areas where its soft and then sanding this area to roughen it up. Then apply new fiberglass and laminating resin, then re-gelcoat.
The idea you had for cutting the holes and pouring the resin into the hole until it comes out the vent would work better if you could put a vacuum on the vent hole and pull the resin through. You see, the resins flow behavior is whats going to control how much of the soft area gets more resin. Its a better repair job if you take your circular saw and set it for about 1/2 inch height and cut out just the top section of the floor where its soft. If the core is damaged, you can repair it befor laying up new fiberglass cloth. If you want to blend in the repair area, I would finsh with a fine weave of cloth over the whole floor, then the gelcoat. Make sure you sand the floor before you lay up new glass as this will help adhesion.
I also have a bunch of hole where the last owner had drilled to mount things. If the hole goes all the way through like it did on my bridge, then I used an epoxy putty to fill them. The epoxy putty is mixed in your hands anf then pressed into the hole. Take your putty knife and smoth the top to feather it out into the surronding area, let dry and then sand smooth and re-gelcoat. you can also use the epoxy putty to also fill in the chips and gouges.

I remember reading about these soft floors on the old site, seems like its a common problem with the way Pacemaker made the flooring. It might not be caused by delamination

[leokow]

Terry, it is a very common problem from what I have seen so far and most of it begins when someone drills a hole and water penetrates then over the winter the water freezes and acts like a jack to delaminate the core from the glass layer. I had the problem in overdue when I changed the front hatch and put in the teak frame and bomar hatch. The core balsa was rotted away in some places but in others it was just separated. I repaired the rotted part and epoxyd the core back to the surface and it worked out fine but this is a much bigger area , I looked at it closer last night and he has a captains chair bolted thru in the center of the deck , you can see about a 1/2 inch indentation around the base of the chair where he pulled the laminates together and squashed the core. I think if I remove the chair and cut around the edge of the entire floor it will just be able to be lift it out, even if I cut it in half to make the pieces more manageable, I think it'll work out. I really haven't done too much work like this, so I'll have to reley on your expertise in this area, and gel coat I have never worked with so I have to start from scratch with that. The old boat I just used Interlux 2 part epoxy to cover the areas that I repaired,but I don't want to do that on this boat. I've read alot from a book by Allan Vaitses on glass repairing and I keep re-reading it,but I still don't feel comfortable in the gel coat area.

[changeofpace]

Leo, I'm going to send you a adobe acrobat file from one of my customers CCP, who are a main supplier for the marine FRP industry. It has several good chapters on gelcoat, gelcoat problems and their fixes. Most of it is for someone building boats, but it also talks about the benefit of painting over a gelcoat and how to do it correctly. I'd try and post it but its 127 pages long and would eat up the bandwidth here. If anybody else would like it I can email it to them also. I already cleared it with my contact at CCP for permission to distribute the file so no problems with giving it out.

If you do go the route of replacing the delamination, remember, you only want to remove the damaged area back to where its solid, if it is delaminated, you should be able to cut it out and lift it off exposing the core underneath. If the core is damaged, I would cut out the bad section and replace. Use a good epoxy or vinyl ester for this repair as its structural in nature and these will give the best strength. Once you have the bad section removed, apply the laminating resin and glass and poll out with an FRP roller to push the resin into the glass and remove the air bubbles, dont try and do it all at once if the section is deep, but build it up. once its even with the old flooring, you can sand it starting with 50 or 80 grit, working up to the finer grades. Make suer you sand the whole floor to promote good adhesion of the new gelcoat to the old surface
Terry

[merwin10]

Terry,

Would you please email that document also I will post it on a site and redirect it form here in that way we don't eat bandwidth or space -

Thanks

Mike -
_________________
"Best part of Boating -- is the people you meet"

[changeofpace]

Mike, I get the message from my mail server that the file size exceeds your servers max file size. I pm'ed you a copy of the failure notice.
I can mail you a copy on cd if you want,pm me your address
Terry

[merwin10]

Actually it is not full but the attached file size must large - 7.6 MByte is the limit - Over that needs to be split into subparts -

Mike -
_________________
"Best part of Boating -- is the people you meet"

[changeofpace]

Mike, cant seem to figure out how to split a PDF file since I only have the reader. I will try and cut and paste into a word document, if I can do that I'll send you that
Terry

[gemini]

I may be able to help. One of my two email accounts should be able to receive a larger file (depending how big it actually is of course, but I can usually get things larger than 7.6MB.)

I have Acrobat so if I can receive it, I can carve it up into sections for you.

I'll PM you my email addresses if you want to try that.
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Ron

[changeofpace]

Ron first address came back as file size too big, havent gotten a return of the second one yet
Thanks for the help
Terry

[changeofpace]

Ron second one just came back as failed, gave me your name and no reason for the failure
I'll try something and see if it works
Terry

[gemini]

Terry, I'm really curious how big that file is. One of those emails is my work one, and I usually can get things 10MB or so without issue.

The only other thing I can think of is if you had a copy of WinZip, it can build zip files where it will split your file across multiple zips, and then WinZip at the other end can put it back together.

But it might be best to do what you originally said, i.e. mail a CD to Mike.

Thanks for trying.
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Ron

[changeofpace]

File is 10.6 mb, 257 pages not 125 like I thought.
I was trying to spli it into jpgs with a demo utility last night. it worked byt put a big watermarl right in the middle of the text so you couldnt read it. I'll try winzip next
terry

[changeofpace]

zipped file came back also. Asked CCP for a website for download. Some skunk is selling the same cd on EBAY for $40 (Item number: 4623727967). CCP gives them away for free, guy probably took them at the show in St Louis last week and is making a fast buck. amazing how low some people will go to make some money. Contacted CCP and let them know about the ebay seller. as soon as I get a response on a website I'll post that
Terry

[gemini]

What I was suggesting with Winzip is that after you create the zip archive, open it with Winzip, and then try Actions -> Split. You will get a screen where you can give a name and specify in a drop down the file size you want to break it into.

For example I can open a zip I happen to have which is 4.8MB, and when I used that option and supplied the name 'split' (in the File Name box) and selected 1.2MB (in the Part Size box), it created 5 files in all. One called split.zip which is just a little stub file, and then split.z01, split.z02, etc each of which was 1.2MB.

If I open split.zip, as long as the other 4 files are in the same directory, Winzip automatically puts it back together and shows me all the original contents.

If you could do that, then the individual pieces should be small enough to be mailed - not all in one email message of course. You probably wouldn't have to go to 1.2MB, that is the old 5 1/4 floppy size. You could choose 3, 4 or 5MB and still have mailable files.
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Ron

[changeofpace]

My version of winzip does not have the split option under the action or any other boxes on the toolbar

[changeofpace]

OK, Winzip version 10 seems to have done the trick, none of the emails have come back so Mike and gemini, you both should have it in your email
Thanks goes to Gemini !!!

[merwin10]

Thanks for all the effort Terry - I will assembly it and post a link to it -

Mike -
_________________
"Best part of Boating -- is the people you meet"

[merwin10]

Ok terry I got the files but they were junk - Listen just try to zip the file looks like it might be small enough - needs to be 7.6MB or less -

keep trying we will get thee sooner or later -

Mike -
_________________
"Best part of Boating -- is the people you meet"

[leokow]

Mike, that file Terry is trying to ship is 10.65mg!

[changeofpace]

Mike, take all 3 files and put them into the same folder. One of the files has a .zip extension and the others have a z01 or z02 type extension. doubleclick the file that has the .zip extension and it should open. if not Gemini sent me a modified version from the same files I sent him, which is smaller because the links and shortcuts are gone
Terry
oh yeah, you will need version 10 of winzip since the older versions dont have the split option

[merwin10]

Did all that and it is unreadable - Maybe since Gemini has it have him post it and provide a link from here - That way you won't have to do anything - He knows how to set up a link -

Mike -
_________________
"Best part of Boating -- is the people you meet"

[gemini]

Ok, here it is, at least for now. I don't have that much web server space and this is eating a good chunk of it, so at some point I may need to remove this.

This is a 3MB file so dialup users, go out for a beer while you wait.

{{Please see sticky post under this forum - link is there! - Admin}}

Thanks to Terry.
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Ron

[merwin10]

Terry and Ron thanks for all the effort on this - I have made it a sticky post with a poll under a separate topic - Again thanks for the help!

Mike -
_________________
"Best part of Boating -- is the people you meet"