Repair/Rebuild the Bulkhead / Titanium Chainplates When Re-rigging - Patrick Childress Sailing #52

I don't know why designers and builders. put chain plates right up against Plywood bulkheads so we are going to change this to this and it will never deteriorate again hello we are Patrick that Rebecca, Childress on the Valiant 40 brick house, we are currently hauled out in Richards Bay South Africa going through the boat. doing a lot of things making some modifications and getting this boat ready to cross the Atlantic to South America. What sips gonna do this morning is to take this little angle grinder and get into this crack right here at the. toe rail and get in here and grind this out I know this is all solid fiberglass. in here but there might be some voids I can't imagine why it cracked like this. but we'll dig this out round it out take it out to here maybe up to here and then, we'll lay in some thin fiberglass cloth and rebuild it this is the hole for the. upper shroud chain plate and we will be working today on that bulkhead that the, chainplate was attached to our chain plates are made of grade five titanium grade five titanium is three and a half times stronger than 316 stainless steel, grade five titanium is impervious to the marine environment there's no sense in. having such high quality chain plates if I'm little suspicious of the bulkhead to. which it is attached so we'll be digging into that bulkhead today and fix, anything that we find wrong with it all of our chain plates mast tangs and, clevis pins are all made of grade five titanium any lesser grade just wouldn't, do and we get all of our titanium products from allied titanium in. Washington State they also have an office in Delaware if you would like, more detailed information on the use of titanium on a sailboat you can refer to. my article in practical sailor magazine December 2011 titled the great titanium. trickle down and of course that's accessible online okay. 41 years old that's older than you isn't it I'm sure you're gonna last better. than this boat though yeah we'll fix it up good make it make it good for, crossing the Atlantic I'm gonna be down below taking slats out and getting things ready so we can work down below after this is all ground out - see you, in a few minutes okay so I'm down here in the starboard, side and I've taken. Let me get this light turned on here. I've taken everything out, of our stereo cabinet so I could get to this is insulation that's why it doesn't look so good just peel back and I wanted to get to this tabbing because I saw, that it was loose so I've pulled this tabbing away from the bulkhead and it's nice to see that there's no rot or anything it's still solid, it's in good, shape but it had been damp behind there that's, probably why this pulled away so I have the dryers on here they've been running all night and they have a little heater over here on this side I'm gonna let it, run for another 24 hours it looks pretty good up here the tabbing on the other. bulkhead where there's this what is it an Aft lower shroud chain plate all that. tabbing is in good condition and over here I've been ripping out the ceiling and I'll be pulling all these slats out to get them out we'll finish those we'll, send them down so this is a ceiling panel that I took down on the backside here it says Marlite planks blocks panels man-made finish hardboard. Hardboard would be more of a generic name for this stuff masonite is another brand name, manufacturer of hard board but it's a paper product compressed heat treated. with a hard finish on one side and this is what happens to it when it gets a. little wet occasionally this came down from over the galley actually over the stove and it's all alligatored, and you can see the. paper here sort of pulling away here I would not call that marine grade so we, replace these with fiberglass panels that I had made here in the boatyard and, incredibly expensive I had to do that because the Jeep that has been loaned to. us at that point it was in the shop I just couldn't run out and get something

else but we have been using PVC polyvinyl chloride sheets for sealing. material this is a small piece of the panel that we use for the ceiling. and they come in four by eight sheets that it's four feet wide eight feet long. in one eight in one quarter-inch thicknesses this is PVC polyvinyl, chloride same stuff that water pipes are made out of very smooth shiny surface on. both sides its aerated in the center so it's late it isn't silent yeah but it is, very flexible the only negative that I see about this. is that it is a bit on the soft side you can actually take your thumbnail and, really press in and cause an indentation so care must be taken when working with. it it does scratch easily but once it's up then it's really no problem it's very. easy to clean with some Windex to clean off any mildew or maybe some dirt that. somehow got up there good stuff lasts forever water doesn't bother it and this was a little dampen so I've had just a little leak from the chain plate I think the the hole for the chainplate. coming through the deck was just too tiny to get enough sealant in there. butyl sealant so I'm gonna build this area up the way outside so I'll have to, do a voiceover apparently there was just a tiny leak maybe the hole wasn't big enough to carry enough butyl sealant to seal the chain plate properly but the bulkhead did get a little damp this the tabbing on this side is in good shape but what I'll do is take thick and epoxy and smoothen the whole area and build this up and make sure everything is nice and tight and then painting varnishing, that just won't work so we'll put some plastic laminate like Formica over the, top of this and make it look good but the whole idea will be to isolate this, bulkhead from any potential water in the future we'll get these slats out of here. sand them down varnish them make them look good we'll put everything back in, here so any owner in the future will never have a problem with water, intrusion in this area or problems with water affecting the bulkhead pulling, these slats everything has to be numbered for their proper orientation, back in place and an arrow showing what side is actually going up otherwise it becomes a tremendous puzzle trying to figure out what slat went in what, particular position these flats were installed at the Valiant factory using. common steel Brad's and these Brad's are so deteriorated most of them don't have. much gripping ability anymore and some of these brands I can't pull out of the, wood I have to drill them out because they're so rusty just to get those rusty. heads out and then the hole will be filled with putty and then sanded and, then everything will be varnished and looking pretty good again reinstalling these latts I'll be using stainless steel pan, head screws when I first checked the moisture reading of this bulkhead it was up there around 25 percent which, is rather high and after two days of the heaters drying this bulkhead it has, gotten down to 10% 8% and normally 8 to 12 percent is furniture-grade kill dried. lumber so this bulkhead is good to go we are ready to reassemble things I decided not to just reglue this. tabbing to the bulkhead but I'm going to rip the tabbing out from the bulkhead and also from the fiberglass Hall and installed new layers of fiberglass, tabbing this actually came out a bit easier than, what I anticipated but it's not unusual for old fiberglass tabbing to get a little weak in its join with the fiberglass hull but we'll be putting this back far stronger than what the factory ever did after wire brushing and then sanding, with 40 and then 60 grit paper it's time to wipe everything down with the acetone, but in a confined area like this boy you sure you have to be able to hold your. breath for a long time I've got two layers of by bias... biaxial and with a chopped strand mat backing we'll put this one on first and then this one over, lays it and we have things set up in here so some plastic so I don't make too

much of a mess this piece of plywood is gonna go up here so I can wet out the, fiberglass to go back up in the corner here I made a fillet and I just had a, little round disc of fiberglass and I used that it's like a big silver dollar just a round circle of fiberglass and I use that to squish in thickened epoxy so, that's epoxy resin thickened with Cabolil so that helps to make a radius so that the fiberglass cloth won't have to make too tight of a turn so I'll be. following the old profile of where the tabbing went long here then back into. here and then I'm going to put a second layer of fiberglass cloth and that'll. come back over to here so actually it's going to be a thicker and stronger than. the previous tabbing I'm using epoxy resin on all of these repair projects and the thin roller it does a great job of rolling out in. squeezing out the excess resin and any air bubbles that might be trapped in the, resin and the cloth once the fiberglassing is done in while the resin, is still wet then the peel ply goes on peel ply is a. polyester cloth and it helps to lay down the fibers of the fiberglass and makes for a much easier nicer smoother finish so they'll be little or no sanding needed in this application but then I suddenly decided to lay up two more, layers of the combicloth and more Peelply so in the end the lay up is twice as, thick as what I originally intended so let's go around to the other side and, here on this side of the bulkhead I just finished sanding all of the glue everything that I use to level out in here I use the Bosch sander for sanding, all of this up here and what an amazing tool just the power of the machine itself blows a lot of that dust down this tube in a way there was hardly any. dust coming out but what I noticed there was some dust then I went and turned on. the vacuum cleaner and it's amazing just how dust free of an operation it becomes. what a good machine and I'm plugging up the hole up here where the chain plate came through we're gonna patch that up from the outside make it nice and solid. so when the plastic laminate goes up here any water that might come through a. chain plate hole is not going to touch this bulkhead though the wood bulkhead. it'll only be able to run down the plastic laminate to eliminate any. potential riding situation for a future owner of this boat so everything is in here both sides very well tabbed in and now it's a matter of sort of putting, everything back together again and now I have to get a laminate trimmer a power, tool to trim out to cut out the plastic laminate I'll first make some templates and then cut it down on the ground and cut it to shape and get ready to install so rather than trying to make one big. template out of one big sheet of cardboard I'm going to cut this up to, make smaller pieces and then glue them together all right so we have a pretty good. template here a couple little adjustments to make when I lay it out. and it'll fill this piece in cut a little off the bottom this comes up a. quarter-inch comes back over to that arrow and then I'll cut it see how well, it fits well that's all that we have time for today in this video but the. next video will pick up right where we left off cutting the plastic laminate for this bulkhead that's right behind me I hope. this video is worthwhile for it if it was please click on the thumbs up button down below there and also the subscribe button if you haven't already also in the video description there will be a link to the, tip jar if you don't mind helping out in that direction that lets us know that the videos are being appreciated and certainly gives us encouragement to continue making them also in the video description will be a link to the practical sailor titanium article so thanks a lot for watching we'll see you next time