1975 18' rebuild

[small45]

Not much progress this week but almost ready to start making some progress on the floor. i just need to finish mounting my fuel tanks a make accomadations for the rigging tubes.

i started digging into the gunnel caps(pretty sure these are unique to the 18') as they seemed overly heavy, i figured the core material must be wet. upon cutting into them, i was surprised to find the plywood cores were actually dripping water. i would say they were probably wetter than even the transom core was. this suprised me because the boat sat in covered storage for two years since i bought. i guess its a good example of trapped moisture.

some pics of the caps





i realize it's hard to see it in the last picture but the caps have 2" or so of camber in their 13' of lenght. that explains why the plywood coring had dozens of dato cuts in it that go thru all but the bottom layer...just make it more easily conform to the camber. so this leaves me with some questions.

should i replace the coring with similar plywood methods or maybe consider adding exrta layers of glass instead (similar to Strick's 20)?

also, my gas tanks came with big yellow warning labels about bonding them. i assume this is similar to grounding?

here is one of the console i'm hoping to use

yeah, my flame suit is on...but it is a nice console!