Artwork on the bow? General Forum Forums

It's not wood, it's resin, that's why it pulls away. It seems to shrink over the years and the 'outside' half shrinks at a higher rate, probably because there is less material there.

What I did was just put some 3M 4200 in the gap and let it cure. It takes quite a bit, but once it cures, it seals it up and it looks much better. It also will help adhere it to the hull and keep strong waves from getting up in the gap and breaking the board. I read on one of these forums where a guy lost his boards that way.

It seem they were originally varied, perhaps it was the owners prerogative how it would be painted. In all cases it seems that the raised elements were painted gold (or maybe sometimes silver) and the background is always a primary color, or white.

Here is a picture of what I did. You can see the bead of goop, sealing off gap between the board and the hull. I do not recommend using 5200 for this. Too strong.

Here is a scan of an original brochure. The middle picture shows the board with gold on white. The lower right picture shows what is probably gold on blue.

It seems like there's always a curmudgeon on every chat room that squash the high hopes of those posting and while I don't like them, I find myself in that role here. My last boat was a Bayfield 25 with beautiful carved teak trailboards. One of them had been hooked and broken with an anchor fluke by the previous owner so I was forced to figure out the whole process to replace them which was involved for me and I own a cabinet shop with all the bells and whistles. Thereafter I spent countless hours sanding and varnishing those beautiful trailboards every year until I was quite sick of the time it took to keep them looking beautiful. Lots and lots of time because they are the most intricate bit of varnish work on the boat if you choose to make them in wood. Mine were pretty thin so they'd bend and I even made a steam box to get them nice and hot so they would fit the curve.

When I bought Grace (DE38) I was very pleased that she had no trailboards whatsoever. It shaved days (not exaggerating) off my annual varnishing extravaganza and for me looks nice and clean.

Lost a trail board in a storm awhile back.  Used two pieces of wood to make duplicate and carved detail with a router with round blade.  Reason lost board was wave action going up side of hull getting under board forcing board to fall off.   Therefore bottom  of trail board must be flush with hull so that water can not get under it.  To get board to conform to curve of hull, you wet hull and put board against it.  when you remove board you will have wet spots which you sand off with an angle grinder.  This will take a few hours to get board flush with hull. 

The lost board was made out of bondo with a thin piece of cloth on the back.  This is very brittle and held to the hull with screws.  Some screws pulled out and others held to fragments of trail board.  I would suggest using bolts to hold to hull and fill in gaps at edge of trail-board with Bondo or equivalent.  Paint board with 2part polyurethane blue and yellow as yellow will not tarnish like gold paint.

Hope this helps.

Cheers and beers,

Jim

Thanks for the compliment.  I do have a picture but can't figure out how to get on this website from Picasa.  If you send me your Email address I will be happy to send you a photo.  We were in S AFRICA at the time, so the theme was what we saw in Africa.  We found pictures of animals in books. made tracings and then enlarged them in a photocopier.  We then arranged them on a board, made a tracing on board , and then routed the board to a depth of half inch.  Truly a labor of love, and very satisfying. 

Note:  To get trail-board to conform to major bend of hull, I used two boards glued together.  After completed carving, I painted both sides of board with epoxy mixed with lacquer thinner.

Cheers and beers,

Jim