Starting from Scratch and need all the advice I can get!

[Cyrus Safdari]

... stainless steel high quality fasteners, sheets of marine-grade okoume plywood, teak lumber, laminate, headliner vinyl material (not the crap with gray foam backing) ...

Tell me when to stop.

I like the videos by Mads and his dog "Hello Everyone!" but that's just the piddly cute details he's working on mostly. Wait till he starts on the heavy duty work like fixing rot on the deck. He's already getting sucked in further and further with his osmosis treatement.
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People spend YEARS refitting boats. No joke.

[robwilk37]

well im 4.5 years into a one year refit so first thing to accept is your schedule is blown right from the start. secondly, and i cant emphasize it enough, having the boat where you live is a huge plus. find a bit of land you can rent and pitch a tent if you have to. commuting to and from the boatyard is a big waste of time. and dont spend too much time building your own boatyard, stay focused on the goal...

[Cyrus Safdari]

Yup! Keep interruptions to a min. I keep having to go back home once a month, and so every time I get back to the yard, precious time is spent setting-up and going again. The problem is not the projects themselves -- that tends to go fast -- the time-consuming bit is setting it all up, getting the materials, tools, space arrangement, then getting access to the area you're fixing ... and before you fix that, you have to address three other things, and while you're doing that you might as well do a few other things because heck now-or-never....and time goes by. And I'm not even really a handy guy -- my neighbor who is a professional boatbuilder from Australia and really REALLLLLLY knows his stuff has been working on his catamaran for 2 years now. He keeps having to go out of the country and return for visa reasons. Sux

[Zach]

1. Most problems can be fixed by the book, in the most direct way possible with a high material bill faster than they can be any other inventive way...

If you find your through hulls have been 5200'd in, you can grind them off.
If your port lights or dead lights need to be replaced, break them out...

Perfect templates make perfect parts, so learn to measure. Dial calipers help speed that along, as do folding extension rules.

Slap on the first layer of paint, thick and heavy. Awlgrip 545 and Awlgrip Awlquick should be your go to coat, as you won't have adhesion troubles, or issues with not being dry for days on end...

Use polyester resin to repair your boat, gel coat as high build primer.

Use epoxy where it shines... Like bedding in hardware, and protecting core materials.

Where you have rot, replace with like materials... It lasted X number of years. Beefing it up, doesn't mean it'll last any longer if rust got to it...

2. If you have no interior, find a sister ship and build the interior like that first. The designer knows that you can't get a 6 foot 4 berth in as a settee if you extend the galley counter 4 inches and widen the walkway between the engine and the L-shaped counter.

Your maximum length of an L-shaped counter is that which you can comfortable contort yourself around to replace the water pump">raw water pump impeller, or align the prop shaft.

3. Remove all wiring from the boat and throw it in the trash, along with associated hardware... Don't build a cabinet face around a dead VHF radio that no longer fits the modern size.

4. Add a garboard drain so you don't sink on the hard.

5. Start from the top down working on the hard. Get rid of the deck leaks, because you can't glue to wet wood.

6. Decide what level of finish you will accept. If you want a 4 inch paint brush in enamel, you can get done quickly. If you start with that as the goal, and your skills improve mid-stream and you start rubbing 320 grit on things looking for flat yacht quality... You will be sadly disappointed with the work you did to start.

7. 2x4's are for building jigs. If you want to use a pine, use a douglass fir.

8. Meranti and Occume are easier to paint than Douglass Fir for bulkheads. Douglass fir is easier to frame door frames because it is stiffer than either of the other two. Use all three where you want, but remember that if you want a yacht quality finish you need something that stays flat as a single skin... which means Douglass Fir. Where you need structural support you are thicker than 3/4... So if you want to go quickly you can skin Doug fir in Meranti or Occume or MDO sign board and get to paint and veneer grade quickly, but you get thicker and heavier doing that.

9. Balance between cost, quick, and fast. Lightness costs money, but light boats are fast. Sometimes you can go to a foam core with polyester faster and cheaper than you can BS1088 Occume and epoxy. Remember that... The sanding cycles and fairing go faster in polyester. Once you get stuck on the epoxy train it is hard to get off.

10. Once you get rid of the deck leaks, repaint the bilge and fill the water and fuel tanks. There are only a few things less entertaining than finishing a refit only to discover that you have to cut out the Vberth, or cabin sole because your tanks that you never tested, leak.

11. Learn about tick sticks, bevel gauges, and how to sharpen a low angle block plane. String is the best straight edge in the world... sometimes even better than laser levels...

12. In order to tab in a bulkhead straight, it normally takes good straight edges screwed or clamped to it so it doesn't cup.

13. Spend $500 on bessy clamps... If you can't clamp it, you can't glue it. If you can't clamp the pattern, you can't build it... and if you can't clamp it straight, the doors never sit flush with your face frame...

14. Leave room for glue. If you hammer fit a counter top, between two bulkhead walls you bow both bulkheads and have a high spot on both sides in your paint and sanding. So, fit tight, but leave room for glue.

15. Learn how to sharpen a chisel and plane scary sharp. Then use a 5 inch mini grinder with 36 grit for everything except the corners and end grain. The mini-grinder is the boat builders chisel anywhere it fits.

16. Don't random orbit sand off material. If you must, use a Porter Cable that looks like a grinder. Buy a Makita 9227c with an 8 inch pad. It makes things flat and removes material quickly. Only use a 5 inch Random orbital where a 6 inch won't fit... 80 grit cuts, 40 grit fairs. 120 grit smooths and 220 grit gets you ready for primer. 320 grit is good enough for top coat.

17. 3M marine premium putty is good stuff before primer. Use Evercoat Ultrasmooth after primer.

18. What you prime that looks good, doesn't look good in top coat. Before you start building everything, build something and take it all the way to top coat so you learn what you can get away with defect wise... Which isn't much.

19. Spray your paint, spray your primer, spray your varnish... and learn how to tape.

20. Recoat times suck, but are a blessing. If you are rolling, don't sand until you have the full build thickness on... Schedule to put two coats on and go back to the boat in 12 hours if that is what it takes... Spraying, 1 to 4 hours and hit it again!

Cheers,

Zach

[UNCIVILIZED]

Sometimes you can rent a lot in a light industrial yard to store the boat in while you work on her. If so, it's worth getting;
- a small RV or camper to leave on site, with shower, bunk, & cooking facilities
- a port-jon
- a dumpster
- a prefab building to use as your workshop. It takes but a few days to assemble one when working with a friend.
- lots, & lots of workbenches. with several of them purpose dedicated to one type of task, such as epoxy work, or painting, etc.
- a thinking chair. so that you can build each piece a few times in your mind first.

[atoll]

Originally Posted by SailingAdrift

Wish I could work in a boatyard. For some reason, Portland Oregon doesn't have any spaces outside of the water to work on your boat. Something to do with environmental rules, and the value of space. To get my boat into dry storage anywhere I can work on it would require a 3 hour drive.
I've got space in a friends garage to store everything, and build a small shop. I'm just worried about overstaying my welcome, by being loud too late or filling it full of the smell varnish or covering it in sawdust. So I'll have to be extra meticulous and considerate.

thats a great start!
value your friends privacy and help,you will be surprised how much you can do in a small space,use it to prefabricate as much as possible before fitting on the boat where space for laying out parts for fabrication will be at a premium.

the last 3 boats i have rebuilt/built have all been on the water

some before and after photos

[FutureStories]

Nice before and after atoll!

Definitely following this thread. Doing a much less intense refit myself. But I just got a new apartment with a boat slip in the back yard and the ability to put a shed in the front yard! But it's still a long walk from shed to boat.

[JPA Cate]

SailingAdrift,

You've already received good advice. I just wanted to add to take a look at minaret's thread "Nauticat 52 Refit", you'll be able to find it using the CF Google Custom Search about 5 items down the Search menu.

Ann

[Glenn.Brooks]

Zach's list of 20 items is a good checklist - especially advice to stay away from epoxy and stay with fiberglass resin for repairs on a fiberglass boat. Epoxy is great for gluing two pieces of wood together, for boat work - stick to FG resin. It's half the cost, faster to use, easier to wet out and set up, and every bit as strong as you will ever need.

After 45 years sailing and commercial fishing I would only add 2 or 3 things to Zach's list:

1) for fiberglass work (more than simple dings and patches) I use a belt sander. It clumps the dust well and does not throw FG particles everywhere like orbital sanders. Also removes orders of magnitude more material.

2) bed everything with Dolphinite bedding compound . Deck fittings, screws and bolts, stanchion bases, WINDOWS/ports, etc. forget 5200, 4200, etc, etc. liberally applied Dolphinite will last 30 years and will be absolutely leakproof in all conditions, over time. Cleans up easily with paint thinner. Best stuff there is for boat refitting.

3). Buy yourself a mild steel 4" straight blade boat knife - nothing fancy, and NOT stainless steel. Mild steel, plastic handle,fixed blade, plastic sheaf. This will be the best all purpose boat tool you will ever own. When it gets dull, it's easy to sharpen with a bench grinder, then reuse. Scrape paint, cut wire, BBQ steaks with it. Multi purpose it is.

All the rest is just a learning curve! Have fun with your rebuild.

Glenn

[Jacko]

Hi S/A your going to have fun. I am very close to a full refit from bare internal hull to complete timber fit out on my steel ketch it has taken 14 years so far and next cyclone season I will finish totally ( think I will have a keg of Champs and a wild party) It has been a fantastic adventure as I retired and started straight away on the job. I suggest you make plenty of time for breaks in the work so that you don't get stale and start taking short cuts I was lucky as I lived on board ( solo no girl would have put up with the sometimes total mess) and I was able to use the boat. I went cruising every year and came back to a marina during the cyclone season and got on with another project. I divided the work up into areas galley, nav station, pantry etc and finished completely each project as I went that gave me a feeling of achievement each time. The saying cruising is " working on boats in exotic locations" is so true for me as I have been known to have the work bench set up on tropical island to finish off a project. So after 14 years of planning and interesting work I will next year only have maintenance and small projects to do. By the way I have made and installed 32 locker doors WOW that's commitment for you Hahaha


Enjoy your refit but don't burn your self out as so many do make it fun and if you start feeling it is overtaking your life stop have a good spell then go back
Cheers Jacko I am off to the islands to sit and waste my days in the sun Hahahah

[SailingAdrift]

Thanks all for the advice! I'm taking many notes for the future and developing full plans for the refit before I get in there and do. The hull's in great shape, so first up is getting the engine, exhaust, cooling, and wiring so I can get her in the water... Then begins the fun part!