Downeaster Yachts.com - Topic: Album of my Refits

Scott Carle on Album of my Refits

Mon, 06 Jun 2016 08:15:52 -0400

This is one of those seal it up or let it breath controversies. The low rent easy solution is to stain it and let it breath so that if it gets water penetration it will dry out. The harder but if done right much longer lasting and durable solution is to seal it up totally. If done right. If not done right then this can actually accelerate rot underneath the coatings. One solution we haven't mentioned is penetrating epoxies. Instead of coating it you fill all holes with penetrating epoxies and set the ends in a cup of penetrating epoxy and wick it up as far as you can into the grain of the wood. Sort of a monolithic sealant. After it cures then paint and seal. Extra few days of work and letting it set but at that point maybe reliably eternal as far as rot goes. A cross between the wonder of the natural composite material wood and the modern properties of epoxy. However I have no long term history I personally can point at for this method so take it with a grain of salt. I do think it would be the ultimate treatment for wood spreaders though. Get some balsa or good spruce and build and treat them this way.

Patrick Twohig on Album of my Refits

Sun, 05 Jun 2016 19:38:06 -0400

I ran caulk through the holes where the lights were bolted. I don't know if they did this on yours, but originally the wires were drilled through the spreader. I think that is really stupid because it's just a place for water to get in so I ran the wire around and taped it off with rigging tape. I was going to go back up there and seal off the edges around the plates and some other areas I think water can get in as well. Lots of things can go wrong.

Scott Carle on Album of my Refits

Sun, 05 Jun 2016 09:10:55 -0400

I'm going to overhaul the security on the site soon. some of the stuff I am using is old and no longer working as well with the newer versions of the website software. Sorry for the inconvenience of having to jump through hoops. When I redo it I will see if I can make it less intrusive. If we don't start getting major spam on the site then I will leave it a little more relaxed. When I cranked it up we were getting 30 to 40 spam posts a day on the forum that I had to manually clean out one by one. It was lock it down or just turn the forum off.

Scott Carle on Album of my Refits

Sun, 05 Jun 2016 09:05:40 -0400

Very nice. I loved all of it. Bowsprit, lifelines, spreaders and deck lights. I have LED spreader lights that I haven't installed yet. Not sure when I will ever get to it. We replaced the spreaders years ago with teak ones.. added some weight aloft.. couple pounds extra but they wont rot like the last ones did. I anticipate they will be going strong long after I am no longer around

Yours look very well sealed but you might want to go up and unbolt them and put some penetrating epoxy in each of the holes the rigger drilled to get them mounted. That would be the one area of possible penetration into the wood. If you do get water in there it will wick into the wood and rot even faster because the resin and gel coat won't let it evaporate out of the wood. Just a thought. Unless he was drilling holes into the bracket on the mast and you had already sealed holes pre-drilled into the spreader.

Patrick Twohig on Album of my Refits

Sun, 05 Jun 2016 02:56:55 -0400

I wanted to post the album of the rigging refits I've done on my DE38. Lots of work but finally got it all done. Lots of info in there. Lots of lessons learned.

http://imgur.com/a/vy9tO