Replacing a DE 45 bowsprit. General Forum Forums

Roger:

We just replaced our bowsprit on our DE 38 and I just sawed the old one in half to get it into the dumpster since it was also full of rotten spots and dutchmen where the last owner had patched and patched. The old one was laminated 2 x 6 doug fir which is what we made our new one out of without knowing what the old one was. One of the better choices for strength and resistance. I think the old one was maybe 4 layers but ours wound up with 5, the center being a piece of marine plywood for extra rigidity. We glued it up with epoxy and clamped it to a couple aluminum straight edges so the blank was very straight. Then it was  lots of rough cutting, I think we used a bandsaw and eyeballed to the layout lines made from the dimensions of the old sprit and then lots of careful hand planing with an electric hand planer. Those are very fun but need lots of respect. We oriented the joints vertically so the wood was flexing along it's long axis for more rigidity. Then we coated it with a couple coats of penetrating epoxy (after we drilled all the holes) and a couple coats of Awlgrip while we were doing the hull. We drilled all the holes for the deck bolts and the pulpit through bolts then plugged one side of those holes and filled them with the penetrating epoxy and let it sit for a couple minutes.

I bedded everything on the new sprit with butyl tape and I'm keeping the windlass base away from the side as that area where the two were clamped together was the biggest patch of rot on the thing. I replaced the two rotten wood blocks under the sprit with blocks made from a couple layers of white 1" starboard we had hanging around from a job we did recently (what luck!) as I'm working on the 10 year concept; everything I do, fix, replace or rebuild is meant to last at least 10 years. Fix it and forget it. I want to go sailing with the utmost confidence but also know that whatever happens I know how the thing works and how to fix it since I made it from scratch in the first place.

It sounds like a lot and it is if you're in a rush but like all things on the boat, not that technical once you pull out the tools and clear off a space to lay it out.

Turned out that our fitting at the end of the bowsprit, I think it's called a cransiron or something, was split so we had the welding shop in the yard make a new one of those as well. That's the way the last 8 months have gone: everything but the engine had to come out and be replaced and then we finally had to take the engine out as well even though it was fairly new. Turns out the PSS shaft seal was installed by someone who could not or would not read the very important directions which would have caused the boat to sink at the slip if it were not discovered by mistake. We've only owned the boat for a year and most of it has been on the hard, making stuff up as we go along. The surveyor was wrong about several key items and anyone who says that Awlgrip is easy is lying or has stock in the company. We also learned how to polish stainless steel from raw stainless. It's a particular trick that the weld shop showed us that takes a particular sanding disk and lots of time but boy howdy,  you can make almost anything shine!

Good luck!

the welder in the yard who did all our chain plates said that most of the cost of the chainplates would be him polishing the raw stainless since it's lots of hours and why don't you do it yourself? So he showed us that a polisher (not a sander) with a 6" disk (not an 8" disk!) and I believe it was 320 grit was the final grit and then a buffing bonnet on the sander with polishing compound and slow speed and lots of patience. It took Kelly all day to do 6 chainplates but she started with raw ugly 316 and wound up with a mirror shine. I'm pretty sure she used something like 180 grit disk first, then the 320 (american manufacturer, the european 320 is much coarser) then finish with a fluffy buffer cover and polishing compound.

I'm pretty sure he had a big powerful buffing wheel set up in his shop but that's how we did everything including the exhaust pipe. The pulpit and stanchions were looking unredemably tarnished so we "polished" them with the 320 and finished with Flitz. 

Rick