everybody guilty with the sailing vessel
dreamchaser and in last week's episode we went ahead and showed how we did a
repair on a companionway hatch we just did a lot of little work we prepped the
mizzen step we fixed the companionway slide rail and we showed some of the
progress made on the coach-house roof as well as priming the decks so a lot of
exciting things going on and what it reminded me of is we're behind so a few
weeks ago when we were prepping and sanding the boom down Deb was doing it
and she noticed a bad spot I'll put a link to the video right up here but
during that video she found a spot in the boom that was a little bit rotted or
suspect we love the wooden booms on this boat as part of the classic look it has
and in order to maintain them we've got to do a repair on this the last thing we
want to do is have a weak structure at that part of the rigging so in today's
video I'm going to show you how you go about one identifying that there's a
problem to determining how large that problem is how to remove the problem
area how to clean up that area and how to scarfin a new piece of wood and sand
it all smooth so it looks back like it's original again this is going to be just
as strong as the original boom I think you guys will like the video if you do
by all means give it a thumbs up if you're new to our channel my wife and I
do videos every single week about our lifestyle living aboard and refitting
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thanks everybody let's get to the video for a little bit of background when we
were sanding the boom dad went ahead and found a couple of spots that needed to
be repaired I'll show a little clip here and just so you can see where what the
overall boom looks like I realized as I filmed all this I didn't actually show
the whole boom so this may be helpful so to get started the first thing we're
gonna do here is we're gonna identify the area where we have a concern so if
you kind of see this it looks a little bit pitted right here and this actually
looks a little bit moist which is odd this was sitting kind of underneath this
covered awning so I'm surprised it looks a little bit wet but we're gonna take
this spot right here and you kind of see where this has been attached so this is
a box frame format this is a piece of wood and then there's a top piece in the
bottom piece and they're probably some blocks in there that Sanders together so
what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna drill a hole right here where this pitted pieces
and the corner here one here one here and one here and the idea is to remove
this section and put an in there so know not how thick the wood
is so what we're gonna do is drill into it and kind of keep an eye on it as we
go that was really soft wood waste often I
would have expected it today this feels really soft and pithy right here so I'm
gonna do the same over here at this section I want to do is get into good
wood so I'm gonna go a little further beyond it I'm gonna take this deck a
little further to solid wood again alright so now we're just gonna kind of
come out here to the width we think we need this wood is so soft what's happening is
it's grabbing on the edge of this bit and it's pulling it across I'm gonna
certainly be careful to avoid that so I'm gonna try and go real light pressure
here to get this to dig in here these things okay if anyone's watch the
channel for a little while you know how much I like these oscillating tools um
unfortunately have one stolen I just wanted to have another one I just buy
their little cheap ones I'll put a link down in the in the descriptions below
I'll get them on Amazon they're about 25 bucks and they work great um I do yet I
do use good blades they cut metal or wood so let's go ahead and get this
started and we'll start cutting a little bit more here so we can see it you wanna
say hi hi I got my helper with me today what you can see here is I got this
outlined in about the shape I want I'm gonna grab a small chisel and I'm just
gonna kind of work up some of these pieces before I start going across the
bottom they don't know what the bottom looks like yet so I don't to go too deep
I drilled the holes until they felt a little bit solid what I'm hoping to do
is get through whatever this piece of wood is without going obviously past
about halfway you can see this pieces coming right out and you can see just
how pitted that is really in rough shape it's kind of interesting to see this
trying to see the construction here so I'm gonna get the rest of this scooped
out of here so we can see what it looks like so went ahead and did this first
layer and I can see it kind of a smooth edge down there so I'm gonna try and
clean up to that edge and then kind of inspect it to see how it looks there's
still a couple of spots here you might better see this still a few spots where
I need that work on it like this is still piffy and then this feels solid
and then I got to get this piece off it's hollow right in here
and I want to see what that is I suspect it's solid all the way up from the end
to here and then it probably was boxed format up there that gives it the
strength where the attach point is so we're gonna do is kind of use some
old-school carpentry techniques right and the idea
here is to get this nice and squared off so that I can put a nice square piece of
material in this place so we've got going on here is it's
getting fairly clean and these little pieces you're seeing here are actually a
little bit of the epoxy or whatever gluing material is used between the
surfaces as they put this box beam together so let's get this cleaned up
real quick and take a closer look I'm gonna kind of do the same thing over
here and let's see if I can show you this here so this you can see that right
there it's still a little pity looking right in here so it looks nice and solid
over here and then right there it doesn't so I'm going to extend this cut
up just a little further to get that repair in better shape but you can see
this is the solid piece right that goes from the end of the boom and you can see
where it's solid all the way through which makes sense we have a heavy
mechanical bonding spot here we want all the strength there and then as it gets
further up into the boom it can be hollow and that's what we're looking at
here so we're going to cut this out a little further do that repair there if you recall I showed from the side
what it was kind of software I'm gonna lift this up just so you can see the
difference you can actually see this really clearly there's that spot where
it's pithy or soft you can kind of see it right there so the good news is I'm a
good half inch past that I'm certainly in good wood that's a great way to scarf
it this is a good area to stop that stuff now a matter of cutting this out
occur the inside of this is sort of a u-channel and you can see the edge this
so this is coat of it it's goes like this and up and around and sitting there
like this up I don't know if they remove this section in the middle right in here
you can kind of see where if I get my finger they see how it's loose there
it's pretty thick I don't know if they did that just to reduce the weight of
the overall boom that could be could be so this is thick this is more than 3/4
inch thick and I need to make it proud so I'm gonna have to put a one-inch
thick piece in here and I could thicken some epoxy and just set it in there and
give it a little space which would probably be fine but I think I want to
go with something thicker just to make sure so this is the other spot on the
boom and this is pretty small that's under an inch in diameter so I think
what I'm gonna try and do is I'm gonna see if I can just drill a round hole and
plug this as opposed to trying to cut out a square here so we're gonna give
that a shot and see what happens again I'm gonna try and go really slow
here because if it's pithy it's going to if it's pithy it's going to work its way
around and then I won't be able to get a good plug on it the good news is this
worked pretty well from a plug perspective I'm gonna turn it this you
can see so I can get my finger all the way in there but we ran out vacuum
against it to get any dust or any of the crumbs that went down in the mess it's
amazing I had McKinley hold the vacuum ran up against this and I put my hands
in the other spot like this over that square hole and I can feel it sucking my
fingers down which is good it means I don't have any other leaks or openings
even just air coming through because I was a little bit worried about this
section right here it feels really solid I have a feeling this just got bumped
somewhere and rather than try and scarf something on the bottom since this is a
major structure there's no patches on that at all I'm okay patching these you
know you can see where this has been scarfed here you see a couple of bolt
holes here probably where at the screws screws together at one point I can see a
scar further up this direction as well so this is gonna be a good way to solid
solid in solid and I don't think it's worth a good way to solidify
I'll make this more solid so this is what it looks like kind of close up and
I'm gonna show this as I go down it but the flash on so you can see it here's
where you can see the channel of the wood on the top and bottom remember I
have it sitting outside this is a mating surface the vertical cut I'm not a
mating surface so the good news is I'll be able to get epoxy on this surface on
the bottom surface bottom side all along this bottom surface and all three of
these sides as well as this made itself once we get that in there and clamped
that'll be a good repair and then we'll sand it all smooth on the top but I do
need to do is see if I can go find a piece of this size wood and figure out
what kind of wood it is I'm not a hundred percent of its teak or not maybe
mahogany well it looks like we're gonna have to call it quits for the day I was
really hoping we'd be able to finish all this project in one day unfortunately
the piece of wood we removed from the boom was actually a little thicker than
I anticipated I thought it was gonna be 1/2 or 3/4 inch thick making it a little
easier to pick up a piece of replacement wood at a local lumber or hardware store
unfortunately was a full 1 inch thick and with that that means that I need to
buy something actually thicker than that I needed to probably get inch and a
quarter because once I epoxy and glue it in there I wanted to sit up a little
higher than the rest of the boom so I can plane it down and and sand it and
really have it form with all the rest of the boom and make a good solid joint I
certainly don't want that to be a low spot where I do the repair so I I don't
know if anyone's actually bought hardwood specialty hardwood before like
this I'll kind of share with you a little bit of what I know on this
typically it's sold by the board foot so for example let's just say and I'm
making up these prices let's just say that a piece of four inch wide one inch
thick teak would be $40 a board foot that means four four inches wide one
foot long by one inch thick would cost $40 specialty lumber like this is sold
by the fourths so for example if you needed a piece of half-inch stock 1/2
inch thick and they had it it would be labeled as 2/4 2/4 if you need one inch
thick that's going to be labeled as 4/4 and that's equal to the board foot if
you're actually going to let's just say you need inch and a half that's gonna be
labeled as six sports and obviously 8/4 would be two inches thick but if you
were gonna buy let's say 5/4 inch and a quarter like what I need assuming that
the lumberyard or the or the specialty wood store has inch and a quarter stock
at $40 a board foot what you're likely going to pay is going to be $50 a board
foot you're essentially paying 125 percent of the price because you're at
5/4 right or 1.25 of board foot it's something good to know
because I will tell you that it's worth shopping around there are some specialty
stores that may not stock 5/4 what they may stock is 2 inches thick 8/4 and they
may charge you for eight fourths and just plain it down to the size you need
obviously that's something you want to know and be aware of because that means
you're essentially paying $80 a board foot for that 8/4 then and it's a
significantly higher cost so now what I have to do is I've got to reach out to
that lumberyard Riverside lumber where I bought my marine grade plywood see if
they have it there's also a place not too far from me called Arcadia specialty
hardwoods I know in the past when I've asked they didn't typically stock tea
but I think they did stock mahogany so I have a small sample piece that I pulled
out of there and I'll bring it up there and see if they can tell me for sure
what it is or if I can at least match it I would be good with mahogany a good
strong mahogany would be more than sufficient for the boom itself
well happy Tuesday afternoon I pop down by the boat here just to bring a small
piece of scrap wood and test it into that boom cut I made where we're gonna
scarf in a new piece the idea was to use just cheap wood I just use an old piece
of 2×4 to cut a template piece out before I go ahead and use the expensive
mahogany that I purchased to put in this for the scarf joint let's take a look
and see how it fits looks pretty good and I'll use this as a template for
cutting the tea well after dry fitting that piece of 2×4 down in the boom I
know that that's the right size I was just slightly narrower than it should be
something to make this a little wider and then any trim I have to do I'll do
inside the boom with a chisel so let's go ahead and cut this nice mahogany on
the bandsaw and you saw me the other day complaining about how messy my shop is
and you'll kind of see what I mean alright I've got my small template here
this is that small piece of 2×4 I had cut as a template I also have my good
thick 8/4 piece of mahogany again 8/4 you'll recall is a full two inches thick
and unlike when you buy 1 inch board a lot of times what you get is 3/4 inch
thick if you buy 8/4 you're getting 2 full inches thickness on this and it's
usually a fairly rough cut you'll have to plane or stand that as well so I'm
gonna go ahead use this as a template I'm gonna cut this to the size I need
and then I'm going to turn around I'm actually going to cut it thin
because I don't need a full 8/4 thickness here I'm okay going a little
wider than this I'd rather trim it with sanding then then get it wrong you got a
nice cut here and we're gonna go ahead and make our cut on this side now now my
thickness on this needs to be one and a quarter I'm gonna use the fence for this double-check it is my fence locked in
I'm just going to apply pressure one direction and then cut the other okay we
can see here we've gone ahead and cut this on the inside and what that means
is here is my piece right here well they write down in it again we wanted the
grain go in the same way that looks good there so I've got my table set here at a
90 degree angle and we're just going to go ahead and get started with this this
sucks the juice down a little bit so let's see what we get going here all right so here's what we have we're
fairly smooth here again this is going to be the site it's gonna go down inside
the term mess so it doesn't need to be perfect we got these sides nice and
smooth and I exaggerate here but I build them a little bit like this just so that
this will fit in there nice and tight same width on this side and then I
smooth down this side here there's a little bit more on this one though I'm
not gonna go too much because what I really want to do is shape this to the
roundness when this is embedded in the mast it's gonna have a little bit of a
rounded shape to it that'll give me the ability to use the palm sander and sand
that down into shape I ultimately want yours although I'm really pleased I use
my small piece of 2×4 scrap as a test drive fit test I then cut my piece of
mahogany to the size I wanted I split it down the middle and then I went ahead
and sanded this on the belt sander to get it nice and smooth this is going to
become the plug that's gonna sit down inside of the boom and will stand the
whole thing top so let's stop it here we'll head down to the boat we'll dry
fit this one more time carefully I don't to pound it in so far I can't pry it
back out but will will dry fit this and then once we know it fits really well
we'll come back with some thick and epoxy tap it in with a rubber mallet
clamp it let it dry and then we'll sand and shape it that's gonna be a good
scarfed edge for a nice wooden boom now with that off we go so I'm just dry fitting this and I've
got my sander here I'm gonna be sanding just just a little bit at a time so I
get a nice good tight fit you can see it's close but not quite there that's
what I've done here is I made this a little bit big I came in here and I've
been sanding it down and essentially I'm making sure it fits real good just by
laying it in you'll notice I marked a I marked a little arrow on the bottom side
that points forward that way I knew what my orientation was each time I put it in
and took it out the good news is a nice tight fit gives me a little tiny gap
around it so that the epoxy will ooze up around it and seal not only along the
bottom areas but also up around the side so now so I'm leaving just a small
amount of wood exposed on the top I'm okay if a little bit of it gets on the
wood you know we sand that up if I need to but I don't want to have a lot of it
covering this wood or goop and down the side so this gives me a nice clean area
to work with you know I'm not gonna bother putting any on here because the
reality is once this sits down in here I'm gonna have to sand a lot of this off
anyway I also went ahead and saved a bunch of the sawdust so when I get done
with this as I sand it down I will fill this little gap a little bit with
sawdust I'm gonna do is just get a little bit of it smeared down on the
wood normally I'll use a brush for this but I
didn't bring one up and I don't want to I don't want to go back down and chance
this starting to pot up a little bit but the reason I'm doing this is just to get
a small moist coat at least on the majority of the wood where the adhesion
is gonna take place I'm using 4:05 which is an adhesive blend so it'll be a
little thicker a little lighter than like a fairing look would be but it'll
give me a nice thick and strong bond not that on fairly thick which is good
and now it's just a matter of popping this piece down and I'm gonna double
check my arrow make sure I have it going in the right spot and I do
hammering give it a tap now I save just this small amount of epoxy and I mixed
it with the teak sawdust and what I want to do is no one have a little tiny gap
over here I want to use this to fill right inside of that gap that way the
color will match better a nice little cheating trick but it works pretty well so now because we use thick and epoxy
what we can do is essentially just take this and peel it right on up because
this is epoxy I could actually start sanding this in an hour to two hours it
would be good and hard I thought about cheating a little bit my thought was boy
if I sanded that just before it was completely before it was completely
cured the sawdust and the and the epoxy would sort of blend in together and make
a nice good look to it good news is I don't think it's gonna look too bad with
this sawdust I added to it already and I'd rather do that and and and come back
and sand it after it's cured rather than chance vibrating it around and having
some of the epoxy settle out of the cracks so this is gonna be a good repair
well let this sit overnight and we'll come back and we'll get this sand and
essentially just sand it smooth with the rest of the boom and it'll look like a
there's no in case you're interested this is my oh so technical way of
capturing sawdust I have the exhaust port on the on the sander and what I
basically do is stick the little exhaust port hose right in here take on elastic
put it around it and let it all capture into the socket it will blow up and the
really fine dust comes out but the heavier pieces of sawdust stay in it so
just to give you an idea already empty is there's not a lot in there but you
know you can kind of see what we end up with here is is this brown dust that's
exactly what we want to color our our glue or our or our epoxy there you go we
always lose one sock in the dryer anyway there's your solutions everybody it's
two days later after I've epoxy this piece down into the mast we were
expecting some pretty heavy rains and while this is under the roof there's an
exposed area behind me so I wrap this up in plastic let's get this unwrapped and
take a look we've got this in here looks pretty good I'm gonna go ahead and start
sanding this down and I'm gonna be using a very low grit I think I have 80 grit
I got in the boom a little bit here so I'm gonna use my leather grits and get
that smoothed out I've done 80 grit we'll jump in here with 120 now there's the final scarf job and again it's exactly what we wanted to see from
a solid standpoint you know the joints look good you can see how nice and small
they are around the edge you know you might want to think you want to get rid
of the entire epoxy line but you want a little bit there you certainly want to
make sure epoxy has bonded those two together you know there's a section over
here where the line is so thin what that means is that wood is just about wood
against wood very little room for any epoxy adhesion between the two this
right here it's gonna be a good solid repair it will last for many many many
years and that is essentially how you repair a wooden structure you can scarf
wood into a bulkhead or a beam
