stringer repair question
 

hello all. i'm restoring a 1977 pantera and i have the floor removed and the rear bulkhead out. the rear bulkhead was rotten.

i have a new florida marine tank coming and i've been grinding in the bilge to make ready for the stringer repair/replacement.

my question is this: do i save the existing stringers and fill in/patch them and then wrap them in glass or do i cut them out and completely replace them?

they are made of 2 by 8 dimentional lumber. they are solid in all areas except where they are lapped at the rear bulkhead.

here are some pics:

I would cut and replace. its actually no mor time then to try and mess around with repairing those. You only want to do this once.

fixx
 

+1,,yep cut them out and install new...use a air chisel with either a panel cutting bit or a muffler bit..you will have them out in a hour..

cut them out and ground the hell out of the bilge. making ready to install new stringers which i'll make from plywood.

i also cut out the battery boxes as there were signs of rot and they were glassed in half assed.

they were rotten on the bottom and i'll use the old ones to template new ones.

here's some pics:

Something tells me them stringers werent original, mine were plywood for sure.

they were absolutely original and are 2 by 8 dimensional lumber all the way to the bow.

i have the second pantera ever produced and i'm sure they modified their methods as time went by.

i bought the boat from the second owner and i also know the first owner so i know the provenance from day one. no work was ever done to the boat.

i kinda like lumber over plywood. no glue to get wet.

Making some headway! Looks like your getting into the thick of it!
Jr.

i just had to put forward stingers in my 10meter.i used a combonation of marine grade 3/4 plywood and 1+6 fir boards.the fir boards were easer to work with

I may be wrong, but from what I was told, dimensional lumber is no where near as strong as laminated ply.

thats right,its not,but it has no glue in it and holds up better in wet locations.

I respectfully disagree, the glue used in marine plywood is made to get wet, however dimensional lumber(pine) will rot quickly if it gets wet.

some pics of the new stringers. they are 11 ply birch plywood with ve resin and matt in between.

i used a scarf joint to match the old and new stringers.

some pics:

Make sure you round off all the corners to your stringers.......glass doesn't like to bend over a 90 degree edge. Also, I would bull nose the overlapped stringer for the same reasons........It was the best decision to have replaced all new with the right materials..............very nice work!

thanks for the heads up scippy. i was thinking of that and now it's what i'm going to do.

new battery boxes and a couple "platforms" in the rearmost bilge corners to mount the hydraulics to.

some pics:

Loeven though those boxes are closed make sure you still put some sort of drain in them. Water WILL find its way in. Also you need to be able to through bolt the battery hold downs, lags into the wood will only last for a short time. Lookin good so far keep the pics coming :cool:

thanks dave. i will add drain holes. i plan on using the same battery hold down method as they did in the old days and that will require holes for the through bolts.

I like to hole-saw out my drain holes and then line them with a piece of PVC pipe (that fits real tight in the hole) then glass in the ends that sticks through the sides. May seem like over kill but I don't like doing stringers more then once.

Thats not overkill . . . . thats actually the way they should be done in the first place :D I do something similar, i use an inch and a half hole saw then round over the edge then carefully wet a piece of fiberglass that i can roll around the hole. Kind of a pain but well worth the effort, I am real particular to not have the slightest bit of exposed wood anywhere. All edges and through holes are cut slightly larger and are fully encapsulated.

Engine mount cradle
 

I was looking at your cradle for the motor mounts. Is that a factory part or something you custom fabbed. Is there a special name for it. Looking to do something like this in my formula 242 to take stress off the stringers from the poor motor mount design.
thanks

Hello. It's a custom made piece. Easy to build with a mig welder and some plate.