Froggystyle

Hey folks...

Been a while since I have been on here, but one of your Skater brethren is having some work done at our shop and wanted me to post up the info here. I have a similar thread going on a different forum, so for those of you who have seen this before... sorry for the double posting. I am just going to copy and paste the info...

For some reason, it isn't posting up the pictures... I will pay for the membership right now and hope it resolves it... In any case, here is the content...



"Much like the Spectra restoration, we don't want to make a habit out of doing repairs, restorations or refits to existing hulls, but much like the Spectra, when the right project comes along I jump on it.

A good friend of mine, and future client, Eric Anderson has a 40' Skater Flat-deck that he bought with some challenges. While only several years old, it was on it's third paint job, has lots of stress cracks in the surface around corners and is not exactly what Eric was looking for, but was a great place to start from.

The first year Eric was attending to the power and drives. After a stop at Larry Peto's Evil toy shop, he now has a set of bombproof 1150 former Sterling race engines under the hatches, and some tricked out #6 drives out the rear.

He ran it all last year... Desert Storm, several other events in the Southwest, and unfortunately, during the Lake Mead poker run late in the year, with the lake really far down he ran the starboard side aground on some rocks.

I got a phone call...

The next week the boat was here at Trident, and pretty quickly Eric realized that the repair was going to be done perfectly. I spoke with Peter Hledin, the owner of Skater with regard to the lamination schedule, and what type of epoxy they used for the job. We discussed how I planned on repairing it, and needless to say, Peter was very interested on seeing how it all would work out.

We didn't plan on doing a conventional repair. One of the problems with a patched in repair is the inability to ensure you got all of the damaged areas. I pitched an idea to Peter and Eric that involved us drilling through the inner laminates (affected by the wreck), de-coring the balsa that was trashed and replacing it with linear foam like we use on the Tridents. After this, we would infuse the repairs from the inside out, not only vacuum bagging in the repair materials, allowing us to use more material with the same thickness as came stock in the Skater wet lamination, but also allow a strong secondary bond to the affected materials. By infusing the repair, we can ensure that all voids are removed, and the patched in panels are as strong as the rest of the boat.

After hearing our plan, and seeing the shop and projects that we have underway, we ended up with a laundry list as long as my arm of things we are going to be doing for this boat, not quite a total re-rig, but damn near.

There were some boats ahead of the Skater when he brought it in, so we are about to get started working on it in earnest. We will be rolling full speed on it here shortly.

For now, here are the shots of the repairs, and some of the before pics. We aren't done with the repairs yet, but they are approaching completion...

Froggystyle

Here are some shots of the damage. We don't have too many of them, but you get the idea...

Nasty ding in the running surface...



Much of the damage was in the rear of the boat, right on the running surface...



Closeup of the gouge in the inner running surface. This should all be flat. The damaged gel and surface doesn't begin to tell the tale of the delamination damage done to the backside of the core... all of which needed to be excavated and replaced.

Froggystyle

Hmmmmm... seems to be difficult to add pics to this.

Do you always have to click on a link to get pics to show?

Anyway... I have some more pics somewhere, but for now you can see this...

Even on a small surface injury, the affected area is huge in comparison. We removed the balsa core for inches in each direction before we found unaffected material to work with and bond to. Once these areas were prepped and ready, we began the process of fitting the new linear foam core into the vacated core areas and designing the infusion process for the repair.

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Once the cores were installed, the reinforcement layers were installed and everything was vacuum bagged in from the inside, we drew it down over the infusion materials and started pulling epoxy through it. The entire amount of "wet work" involved in this process boiled down to five minutes on this particular repair.




Working upside down is a difficult way to ensure no gaps unless you are infusing. Gravity works against you in every case, and repairs like this would sometimes require the boat to be flipped over and worked on.



Infusion is done, and we will pull this bag shortly to see how it all came out.

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Some heavy dings and damage in the forward inner strake needed excavation and repair. This shot shows the post-infusion repair prior to sanding and prepping for paint.

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Larry Peto has gotten a cool new machine that allows him to rebuild engines that were once o-ringed and lets him run a higher performance head gasket for marine use. Eric decided to have Larry perform this mod while we are working on the boat, so Eric showed up with the guys from Larry's and we all yanked the motors one morning. With the hatches off, here we are prepping to remove the port blower motor.



Forklift in place, OSHA manual nearby... we are ready to snatch it out of there...



One big blower motor, coming out.



The sheer size of the motor is breathtaking. It just looks mean.



Eric is the gent in the yellow shirt. Easy to get dwarfed by this motor, but it gives you an idea just how big the thing is.

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Finshed with the bottom repair last week and got to work with the rest of the boat. Priorities and all...

Here is some "finished" pics of the bottom... It is still in primer, but you get a great idea of how flat and sharp it all got. We will actually be detailing the "good" side here shortly to match what we did on this side. Sharp trailing edges are fast...



Tough to even tell where the damage was... but you can look in some of the older pics...



From the back...

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The first thing we started sanding on was the transom after de-rigging the whole boat...



One of the things we are hoping to accomplish is to have a much smoother surface than it was when we got it. There is just a ton of transfer on the boat, and sanding it back down to parade rest will get rid of most of it...



Thinking about calling Mike Rowe of "Dirty Jobs" for this one... This thing dwarfs even my spray booth on the trailer... It will fit in by inches, but we are going to build a shelter in the front of it so I can move around while I am spraying it...

This picture comes under the heading of "What the hell?"



There was a ton of paint on this boat, and as we got a little further down we could pretty clearly make out "Wolverine" and have a pretty good idea of what this boat may have been previously called...



Last chance Erik... you sure you don't want to leave it?

KNOT-RIGHT

Nice!!!


I kinda love a project!

I notice you guys get to work with shorts and tees.

Whats the plans for paint design. Mild or wild??
House of color???

Froggystyle

Thanks! Out of curiosity, can you see the pics, or are they links like they are for me?

Yes, shorts and tees are the norm here. Usually uniform shorts and tees, but the guys don't want to wreck the good stuff sanding and painting.

Paint is going to be sick, but I will let Eric describe it or suprise you if he wants. They will be all House Of Kolor transparent metallics and candies.