RESTORING TWO SUNFISH
RESTORING TWO SUNFISH
...a Journey of a Thousand Miles...
I spent much of last Saturday (31 January '04) with a power sander removing the varnish from Boat One's daggerboard. This was less trivial than it sounds, as it would appear that MHAFB put several clearcoats over their "property of" stencil. It took three sheets of 60-grit sandpaper before I got down to the mahogany, then another sheet of 100-grit to smooth out the grooves left by the 60-grit. I also had to smooth out all the dents and chips in the wood made by bottom strikes and probably being dropped. Mahogany smells wonderful. I could've sat and sniffed the rough-sanded daggerboard all day, but I decided it would be a waste of time.
After the 100-grit smoothing, I went to 300-grit paper on the power sander and really made the board smooth enough for a baby to sit on without fear of splinters. It was beautiful. It was smooth. It was a work of art. It was about to get hit by a coat of Minwax brand Glossy Spar Urethane. This is the only polyurethane we could locate that specifically said "for outdoor use only" at Lowe's. Being in a small town in central Mississippi, we do not, unfortunately, have access to fine marine supply stores. One other person on the Sunfish Message Board, however, said he had had good results with the above-named product.
I put painter's masking tape over the brass strap on the daggerboard, hooked an un-bent clothes hanger under the brass, and hung the board from a tree branch. I proceeded to apply one light coat and went to repeat the sanding process on the tiller extension. By the end of the afternoon the daggerboard had three coats of Spar Urethane and the tiller extension had two. I was surprised to note that the tiller and tiller extension, while dark brown, were actually stained and are actually a much lighter wood - ash.
The next day I sanded smooth the tiller and then the rudder, which mercifully had not had a thick clearcoat applied over the stenciled MHAFB information and it took only took 1.5 sheets of 60-grit to penetrate to the wood. One thing I noticed while working on this rudder is a slight warping in the wood. Rather than being flat on both sides, one is slightly concave and the other slightly convex. I predict this will cause a slight tendency for the boat to turn to port. Worst-case scenario is, of course, the purchase of a new rudder, but only testing this one will determine if that is necessary or not. The smoothed rudder is again a work of art:
At the end of the weekend, the daggerboard had about five coats of Spar Urethane, the tiller and tiller extension both had about four, and the rudder one.
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The weekend of 7 February was cold. In fact, there were intermittent snow flurries here in central Mississippi. Too cold to spray Spar Urethane on the wooden bits. Too cold to begin fiberglassing the damaged hulls.
The only thing left to do was, of course, to begin working on the trailer! My friend has a trailer he purchased and subsequently modified to carry the Protégé, a 14-foot dinghy he built a few years ago. The Protégé is a fine-looking boat, also in need of some restoration at this point, but we carefully lifted it from its trailer and lowered it to the ground just to the rear. Then I hooked the trailer to Mr. Truck and extracted it from the side yard.
After that I drove the trailer up and down the street just to make sure I hadn't forgotten how to drive - and back - with a trailer. Fortunately my skills were undiminished after several months of not pulling any trailer behind anything. Seeing as how it was 37° outside, we rearranged the garage a bit and put the trailer inside where there is a heater. After much conversation, careful deliberation, sketching, measuring, debating, stalling, procrastinating, hemming, hawing, yawning, and a bit of eating and drinking, we finally got around to cutting a few 2x4s and called it a day. My friend's motivation to work on boats is proportional to the temperature. At 37° outside and probably 65° in the garage, he wasn't very excited. I estimate that another hour of work will see the major structural elements of the A-frame completed, and another two hours to 90% completion, maybe three or four until the boats could be safely carried on the road. Of course as everyone knows that means it will actually take six to eight hours.
We also located the rudder and daggerboard to Boat Two in my friend's storage locker. The tiller and tiller extension remain MIA, however. We now believe a suitable copy can be made with a 4-foot oak 1x2 from Lowe's. We'll have to wait and see.
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During this long President's Day weekend, we had hoped to take care of at least some of the fiberglassing on Boat Two. Sadly, two things stood in the way of this plan:
Saturday dawned clear and bright. In spite of my not feeling too hot, I
drove to my friend's house, where we finished the major portion of the
trailer, moving it partly into the garage when the rain began right around
1:00 in the afternoon. The image below shows its current status: quite sturdy!
I can do pull-ups on the center crossbeam. All that's left to do is to run
some wire to opposite corners with some turnbuckles to tension the rig and
keep it from leaning front to back, and put platforms upon which we might
mount the boats. Not that the rig wants to lean one way or another, but we'd
like to have a little insurance before we take it on the highway.
Much of today (Sunday) was spent sanding the daggerboard belonging to Boat Two. That is really a tedious task, even with a power sander. Strangely enough, when I finally got all the old varnish off, it seemed as though the wood was damp. Boat Two's daggerboard also did not seem to be quite as nice of a piece of wood as the daggerboard for Boat One - it had lots of little knots in it, and all sorts of random dark spots where I'm guessing water leaked through the varnish or something. I tried to sand the dark spots out but was only partially successful. The images below are of the two daggerboards: Boat One's now has several coats of Spar Urethane, while Boat Two's is simply sanded down to the 320-grit level.
Also - this morning we went to Lowe's to get a few things including more urethane. Four cans won't be enough to do two daggerboards, two rudders, two tillers, and two tiller extensions. We bought two more cans. You may remember that the tiller and tiller extension for Boat Two are apparently lost. As a result, we also went into the fancy wood isle and found - conveniently - some oak in JUST the right sizes! The 1x2x4' was just $3.75 and the 1x2x2' was only like, $1.75; so for under $6 we have replacements! Just need to draw the appropriate outline on the wood, run them through the scroll saw, sand, and coat! Shouldn't take long at all. That's a project for another week, however.
