Paper Weights

[bigeasy1]

Ok,I'm easily amused by things that are not that interesting to others,so I figured that,what the heck,why not bore the folks on CSC with some trivial useless info.
Anyway,I was cleaning out the garage and came across these cores from my Transom recore,and the core from the bottom of the hull where I put a water pickup to the seacock.

The transom plug is from the hole where the electrical,throttle,and shift cables run to the kicker cable,and the small plug was cut in the hull bottom on the outside step of the hull bottom for a water pickup.

When I did the transom,I only could see the layers at the top and at the I/O cutout.,so it was nice to find these. this gives me the opportunity to see how it actually looks inside the new transom.

The pictures are upside down.The outer hull surfaces are at the top.

On the small plug,the dark layer is the original glass on the hull bottom(about 3/8" thick).the middle layer is a few layers of glass that i had laid up when tieing in the stringer,and the yellowish light colored band(3/8")is a bunch of layers of 1708 that I laid up to mount the seacock on instead of wood.

On the big transom plug the original outer skin is the top layer(about 3/16'')the next is a layer of 1708,and the gray(tinted epoxy) wider band is the thickened epoxy mix that I used to bed the plywood into the core,it's a little more than 3/16" thick but it looks thicker in the pic.
Next is the two layers of 3/4 marine fir with the band of light epoxy used to glue the sheets together,and finally is the new glass inner skin,made up of a few layers of 1708

BTW the transom core sample is 2-1/8" thick(high) and the hull core sample is just about 1" thick

[DonV]

Dang John, what you tryin' to pull with that transom.....a Battleship??? I do the same as you when I cut a hole in the 'ol clunker I always save the plug, mostly to impress other folks!!!

[bigeasy1]

Gee,I wonder why water comes in the scuppers when we're in the back fighting a fish? Of course the kicker motor does'nt help either,but the transom core was very heavy.If I had to do another i would do everything with a composite foam like coosa.

[RUSTYNTABATHA]

i priced a sheet of coosa the other day it was 375 a sheet i think... that was 13/8" thick for the transome.... what do you think the weight difference is ?? Made me curious now

[bigeasy1]

Coosa claims that the Bluewater 26 is 30% lighter than plywood and the 20 is 45% lighter than plywood.
I'm not experienced with the center console 23's but my Tsunami is definitely stern heavy.I tried to keep as much weight as possible as far forward as i could.Had no choice with the I/O (5.7 Mercruiser),and the kicker hanging off the back.
Overall this boat rides sweet,gets up on plane instantly and trollls perfectly.The only issue are those damn scuppers,as long as everyone is sitting in the cockpit they work great,but as soon as we run to the back to play a fish,that's when the deck floods.I use a version of the "famed" Vortex and it works pretty well.

I think I overbuilt a lot of the areas in the restore.I'm sure I could have saved significant weight had I been a little more careful.At the time I had access to a lot of free glass so I overdid things,I removed the core in the rear cap,and because I had a load of roving,I laid up a bunch of layers of it making it a solid piece instead of using a core.
I did all the hatches with plywood and you know you're lifting a lot of weight when you open them.

Here's the Pdf from Coosa's site with the weights of their boards.

http://coosacomposites.com/pdfs/coosa_weightchart.pdf

[Wildman]

The price vs weight is justification in my mind to use composites for the transom in these boats. Pay a little while your building it and have a better shot at a dry deck

[Old'sCool]

These from my 23'.

Transom



Thru hull transducer hole