Wooden Boat People
By McKenzieDriftBoat.com
Crenshaw Restore.
Was going through pictures the other day and found my Crenshaw restore. I found this boat in Junction City OR. Picked it up the day before Randy's boat show a few years ago. It was there in pre restore and then the next year in full restore. Figured you guys would like to see the process. She was in very rough shape.
Notice the bow stem removal. One of my favorite pictures. The end grain of the white oak used for the bow stem just sucked in water and rotted it.
Stored outside most of it's life was the major problem. Store your boats inside folks!!!
New and old bow stem
This process was the biggest structural issue with the boat. Then the fun part of scraping the entire boat. With the help of PBR this didn't take too long.
On other interesting thing was the Formica on the bottom. I hear this was standard with Ralph Crenshaw. I ended up ripping it off and did a 23 oz. bottom.
3.5 oz. cloth for the exterior.Green paint to keep her traditional. New chine caps.
After shots.
This project took about 160 hrs. Spanning the course of a very long Wyoming winter. I love the before and after of restore projects. The final outcomes are very rewarding in what we do. Not only for looks, but the fact we get to use these boats in some of the most beautiful places on earth.
Dutch.
Views: 2274
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Rick Newman on
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The weight is based on a square yard of fabric. There is regular weave, or cloth going in two directions much like the fabric in a pair of jeans. Triaxial is much heavier and adds a third bundle of fibers running at 45 degrees to the first two. www.fiberglasssupply.com is another resource and has lots of fiberglass, epoxy and tools.
Rick N
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Permalink Reply by jeremiah stymer on
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Hey that website was great, lots of great info. how much epoxy would you say it would take to do a 24oz bottom on a 14 ft rapid robert. maybe something a little thinner. i'm not planning on doing much river rafting but i want something that is going to be solid too. i have just a quart kit that i haven't opened yet. if i did the whole bottom you think two, maybe three quarts or a gallon kit? thanks for the help. what are the chine rails on the side used for, any ideas on how i can remove all the caulk like glue that was used before to glue the old wood o the bottom? i am so excited now i just need another two weeks of leave to play, i really like how the botom of you boat has a piece of wood with notches cut out for the floor instead of the old wood i dug out of the ground that came with it. it was more like wooden slats. also if i was coating the inside with epoxy how many coats would you use.
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Jeremiah, One thing at a time. What rivers are you planning on running? How much river running and water reading experience do you have? I ask because 24 ounces of quite a bit of fiberglass, The commercial outfitters in the Grand Canyon are supposedly running about twice that much but they are also floating a tough river and are looking for maximum service life without interruption of service. They also spend quite a bit of money to purchase or build these boats. I have to assume $15,000 to $20,000 a piece. Glass and epoxy is expensive.
So before you consider a 24 ounce floor you need to consider exactly how your boat will be used, where it will be used, your experience level, the rivers you plan to run and...where it makes the most sense to apply the fiberglass and epoxy.
The greater your river running experience the fewer rocks and obstacles you may hit. even with decades of boating experience I still hit a few rocks, especially in extreme low water. I however miss many more than I hit.
If you are planning on heading to the mountains and running low water river you might hit quite a few rocks. When I say that you might hit rocks the majority of hits will come to the chine caps, the pieces of wood along the bottom edges of the boat. They are sacrificial and can easily be replaced. Secondly you will hit rocks on the bow and stern floor sections and slide accross rocks in the center section of your floor. Therefore you are looking for two kinds of protection. Impact resistance and abrasion resistance.
Abrasion resistance can be obtained with fiberglass laminated to the bottom of your boat with epoxy, a "shoe" of 1/4" plywood or people have even applied formica and in some climate a shoe of UHMW can be screwed to the bottom of the boat. Each of these has different costs, benefits and problems. All of which have been discussed a few times within these pages. The search engine at the top of the page will lead you to those discussions. More on this later.
Impact resistance for drift boats is provided by laminating fiberglass to the interior of the floor or sides of your boat. Fiberglass resists breakage whenit is in tension. The fiber do not want to break when stretch. so bundles of fiber woven in to a fiber, laminated to the inside of your boat will improve the chances that you will not damage your boat too badly depending on how hard you hiy a rock or other obstacle. Triaxial fiberglass has an additional "bundle" of fiberglass running at 45 degrees to the other fibers. It adds considerable strength and some weight. Fiberglass on the outside of your boats floor will not anywhere near the same strength as if it were laminated to the floor of your boat when it is being built.
Dutch, correct me if my assumption is wrong, but I am presuming that your 24 ounces of glass is laminated to your boat for purposes of abrasion resistance. You have thousands of miles of river experience and you primarily run the same river quite often so you know where the rocks are and how to avoid them. I'll bet that yoou have to often beach your boats and occasionally drag them over some rocks. You want a dependable boat that won't require much service during the season.
Jeremiah, your conditions are probably not the same as Dutch's. You will need to determine just what you need to protect your boat from, how much money you want to invest, how much time you want to invest in restoring the boat.
I just helped Steve Putnam restore his boat. We laminated 18 ounce triaxial glass to the bottom of his boat and several additional coats of epoxy and graphite to the bottom. On the interior of his boat I laminated six ounce glass between the majority of the frames. In the front three sections we used left over 18 ounce triaxial glass. Steve has boated quite a bit and has not damaged his floor up until now so he has learned to avoid hazards. His boat had a UHMW sheet that had pulled off because it had expanded and contracted enough to pull many of the screws that held it on. So he needed to protect the floor from abrasion and the interior of his floor had some damage from water puddled there while it was stored, hence the fiberglass epoxy on the interior. We also laminated six ounce biaxial glass to the outside of his boat where the Douglas Fir was checking.
Steve, if you read this correct me, but I believe we used about three gallons of System 3 Silvertip epoxy and still have some left. We also used Daly's Seafin Teak Oil on the inside of his boat, I think we have purchased about three quarts so far at $17.00 a quart. We started this spring and worked quite a bit on his boat. He still has to rebuild the boat furniture over the winter and should have it on the river next spring. I'll bet we probably spent a total of 80 to 100 hours so far. He did a lot of sanding, taping, sanding and oiling. It's looking really good.
I built my boat from a kit over a period of almost five years but I had plenty of experiences that required rethinking and innovative solutions to corners I had found my way into. I learned alot, spent probably 500 to 600 hours. I also went back to school, finished of the garage/shop, sorted out and moved a lot of tools/junk, did lots of part time jobs, went fishing etc.
If the caulk like glue that was applied to the bottom of your boat is 3M 5200 you will be spending lots of time digging, prying, scraping, cussing, sanding, and other creative techniques to remove it. It is very tenacious. When I have removed old 5200 it pulled the plywood apart.
So, you have a few things to think about, where you will use the boat, your ability to avoid hitting rocks, how much time and money you want to spend, whether or not you have a heated, dry shop to work in, what kind of a finish you want to apply, whether or not your plywood is checking, what tools you have and how strong your desire is. With that being said you may just want to patch things up, throw a coat or two of oil based porch paint on it and go have fun.
We'll help you out. Post some more pics of the details that I mentioned so we can see what's going on.
Good luck,
Rick N
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Permalink Reply by River Dory on
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Boat looks great! I'm restoring a 16 X 48 Ray's River Dory right now. Was wondering what kind of paint that you used? Thanks! RD
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River Dory Rick Newman and I just had a real good experience with the Kirby paint company. Product and customer support was great. There was a learning curve with product after that clear sailing. Fire a message to me for more details. I hope Dutch I didn't interrupt the flow . Very nice work on your boat. This is why this site is so valuable to us newbies.
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Permalink Reply by Adam "Dutch" Gottschling on
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The only reason i put that much glass on the bottom was because the bottom ply was only half inch. I would have put a shoe on the original bottom but i did not have a piece of ply laying around. So i put more glass than i usually do. 17 oz. is what ive done for the past three boats.
try to avoid rocks, learn to read water. I never hit anything with this boat before i sold it.
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Permalink Reply by chris towles on
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I wouldent say 24 oz is overkill at all, but it is a stout bottom. Most common is 17oz biax with mabye a light cover glass 6 oz or so. To do a bottom like this will require way more than a quart of epoxy. I bet you are looking at a gallon and a half minimum. To do 6 oz sides, 20oz bottom, and have some left over for bonding you need about 3 gallons. Yo figure out how much resin you need, precut your glass to shape, weigh it on a scale and add exactly that much resin. For figuring puroposes epoxy weighs approx 9 lbs a gallon
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Permalink Reply by Phillip Westendorf on
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Dutch,
Very impressive looking job on the DB. I can see your passion for these restorations in the results. I really like the fact you are saving a piece of the past.
Congratulations,
Dorf
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Rick your guess is good on what we have got in materials. There were times it seemed like 1000 hrs. in sanding. Im guessing hrs. closer to 120 to 130 as I had about 30 in heat gun strip and chemical removal of varnish on inside alone. Never again to be varnished Amen. I cant wait to add up my sandpaper cost lol.
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Permalink Reply by Dan Hooper on
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Dutch, what did you use to bed your new stem? Mine is ready to go back on & I haven't decided on what to use, 3M 4200 or epoxy.
Thanks, Dan.
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Dan,
I used thickened epoxy for the bow. That is a major structural piece and is never supposed to come out. The new stem was wetted out with thin epoxy as was the ply. It didn't even make that much of a mess.
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The wooden piece in the very front on the shelf that two humplike projections, what are the humps for. any ideas on where to get some new oarlocks. the ones i have are on rubber stops but the oar locks are so small i can't get them to move, might have to cut them off to change them.
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