'79 teardown and rebuild.

[3 Squids]

You probably seen my post in the general area about the '79 cuddy I brought home. I figured now that I'm actually working on it now I'd move over here to the repair section.

I knew the transom needed work and hoped it was otherwise solid. Today my wishes were crushed. I cut the cap off of the rear and started gutting the transom.

Cap section removed:


Shot of the transom pre demo:


I was quick to see there was not much left of the transom. There was actually one layer of plywood with just a second layer in the raised area you see around the sterndrive hole. Tapping on it with a hammer showed that only near the top was there any structure left.

Pulled the inner skin off. Rather easily thankfully:


Port side:


Stbd:


The center section of plywood around the sterndrive was mush. Scraped right out. I then used a flat bar between the rest of the wood and the outer skin and it came off surprisingly easy. Probably 70% of it just came off with majority of the layer of CSM with it. You can tell where you can see the woven roven clearly that it came off good there. The other areas left a layer of plywood. I scraped as much wood off first to lessen the sanding and gumming up of my sanding disc.

Here she is with a light sanding over it all. I plan to try and sand all the existing CSM off before reinstalling the transom:




Port:


Stbd:


Now the crummy news. Stringer's are mush. I checked them up to the tank hatch and they are pretty much non existant. So I imagine they'll need replacing all the way up. Not at all what I wanted to find but it is what it is. Just now I have no idea where I'm heading with this project. My very first plan with this boat was to strip it all the way down and rebuild with all composites and make it a center console, skiff type boat. Then I thought just putting a transom in it and running it the way it was sounded good but it appears stringers and I'm sure the deck will need to be re-cored.

My next plan is to pull the gas tank and see if the stringers are rotten all the way up. I'm not holding my breath that they aren't. I really am stumped at what to do. Part of me just wants to build a center console out of this one then maybe sell the green boat as I don't see any reason for having 2 center console (the wife doesn't see any reason for 2 boats period). Then again it's a beautiful boat as is. I guess I'll cut the floor out and see where that takes me. Either way I'm looking at a lot of time and money but in the end I will have a rock solid, non wood boat.