'73 23cc restoration

[natchalkley]

So I started this project about 2 months ago. I first stripped the console, leaning post, and hatches. then I got a buddy who has a bobcat to pull the engine off and put it in the back of my buddies pickup and then to the garage here at the house.
I decided to attack the transom first and opened it up to find what I had suspected: a transom full of mulch
and

I found that ~30% of the inner layer of glass on the transom skin had never laminated to the outter skin, so after a lot of carefull discection with hammer/chisel and sanding, followed by some quick glass work I was ready for the new transom.

my dad and i tried to get the transom in on new years eve and the epoxy on the bead around the edges kicked too quickly so I ended up having to grind out a lot of epoxy before we could try a second time. learing from my mistake I got another buddy of mine to help with the transom we finally got it in


It is 2 sheets of marine ply epoxied together and it got 3 layer of the biaxlecloth over top as well as getting tabbed in all around the sides. I also took out the fir blocks that were the old scupper and glassed over the top of the old thru-hulls.

I then started the grinding and stripping of the old patch on the bottom that the previous owner had done. this part ended up being a lot more work than expected because of some serious structural work that I had not anticipated.
Istarted with 2 strips of biaxle on both of the chines, followed by a layer of biaxle and a layer of woven roving over that.
then I started on the long patch on the bottom. because I was working by myself and was working with the boat more or less right side up, I used small pieces and overlapped them.
then using some of the system 3 quickfair stuff, I built up the chines that I was repairing and shaped them with a fairing block. the chines do still need some fairing, but they are looking pretty good considering what they did look like.

yesterday and today I have been sandwiching 1/4" AC ply with a layer of biaxle for the transom cap. I will probably work on the doghouse design done some this week and start building the plywood structure for it.