[alberg30] Toe rail replacement

[Robert Kirk]

From: Robert Kirk <kirk at neptune.gsfc.nasa.gov>

Well, I've done the job myself - on a very short section of about three
feet near the bow where a chock pulled out, taking some of the wood with it.

The carpentry is not rocket science but does take a lot of precise
measurement of the various tapers because no faces are square. All the work
can be done with a table saw and the usual hand tools including a rasp for
final forming.  It seems that all the tapering was done at about 20 degrees
so that the cuts were not all that difficult once you figured the order of
cut.  (I remember that most of the companionway cuts were about 20 degrees,
too.)  The hardest part of the woodworking was cutting one of the pretty Z
shaped scarfs and matching it to a new scarf cut in the existing toe rail.
That's where the rasp was handy.  I'm not sure how I would handle a much
longer section, though, which would require bending the teak to follow the
curve of the deck.  In theory one could steam it in a form to the right
curve, but I'm glad I didn't have to try it.  I wonder how the folks at
Whitby did it? Surely they couldn't have afforded the time for all that
steaming and hand work.

More difficult was removing the quarter inch stainless steel thru bolts
holding the toe rail to the deck.  They were all bent with time and nearly
impossible to unbolt from inside the forepeak.  I wound up twisting the
heads off two of them, which is pretty hard to do with stainless.  Once
that was done, the rest was a piece of cake.  I thought about trying to use
the existing bolt holes thru the deck but that would have been too tough to
align, so I filled them in with sealant and fastened the toe rail with new
holes.  

I found a piece of 5/4 teak which worked perfectly.  I have enough left
over to replace another short section by the shrouds which got dinked. The
hull is straight there, so no bending needed either. That'll be a winter
project when she's up on the blocks again.  I wouldn't not recommend trying
to do that type of work afloat unless you've got a nice flat calm
anchorage, unlike mine.

Cheers,
Bob Kirk
Isobar #181

At 01:55 PM 9/16/99 EDT, FINNUS505 at aol.com wrote:

>You put into words what I was too lazy to!  It's a complicated piece of
wood, 
>that toe rail on the older boats.
>Let's hear from someone who has done the job, replaced the rail, pref. by 
>themselves, or at least give us an idea of what it costs to have done 
>professionaly. [...]

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