[alberg30] Everything I know about dingys

[alberg30]

Tom; here are some notes on the dingy project.

--After several unsuccessful attempts at using an inflatable dingy, I vowed never again to use one. I swore I'd be a hard dink man from then on. Thus I bought our dink from a retired Lt.Col. who had it stacked on his wood pile in NC. He wanted $300 and I was cheap and gave him $200. I promised to take care of it, and with a tear in his eye (knowing it had seen better days) he let me have it.

This dink is fiberglass, 8 1/2" long and about 48" at its widest point. I think its fairly standard as a one-off type mold. I suspect it weighs in around 50-75lb. Its a monster to move by yourself mostly because of balance. The hull showed stress crazing at the points where the seats are glassed in on the inside. The dagger board sheath was plywood; it leaked slightly, and was starting to delaminate. I could have sawed off the sheath and started fresh, but the plywood was just becoming nasty. I encapsulated it in fiberglass, thus solving the leak.

I reinforced the seat attachments only lightly with fresh fiberglass. I left the seats as wood and just painted everything.  Painted the hull with Interlux off-white one part topside polyurethane. Same stuff I expect to use on deck of #499. Painted the inside Largo Blue. Learned good lesson: don't use cheep HomeDepot light green or peach colored rollers to apply paint. Fuzz sticks to everything. Use those sexy yellow close cell foam rollers. Three inch works best. Primed with the brightside primer also by Interlux. That stuff is the best!!

Not sure what you call them, but where you put the oar locks, were originally light plastic "cups". They were cracked and too big for the brass oar locks on my oars. I took the cups off, and replaced them with mahogany wood pieces that the brass oar locks fit snugly in. Blocks are bolted with 5/16, 2 1/2" long ssteel hex bolts throughout the edge of the dink and through the hose.

Now the hose: The edge of the dink is about 250" long. I used about 24' of three inch fire hose. Fire hose they say comes in three sizes I think. Something like a small,medium,and large. The medium is the 3", although it may not actually be called three inch. I cut the first cloth layer on the outside of the hose off. This removes discoloring and also the stenciling that says YOUR LOCAL FIRE DEPARTMENT HERE. The layer of cloth underneath is pristine.Under this last layer of cloth is black rubber. I did not split the hose, but left it intact. Hose is about 1/4" thick when pressed flat. The edge of the dingy is L shaped, with the L upside-down. Originally there was a hard plastic rubrail that scratched #499 when on the water. Pulled this off. Needed to decrease the diameter of the edge that the 3" hose would cover. Did not pad hose, or use rope insert, mostly because I forgot. Seems pretty padded anyway due to rubber inside. 

Experimented with several ways of attaching hose. Predrilling holes separately on the hose and the dingy edge does not work. Too hard to line up.  Eventually used first mate to hold hose in place while I predrilled through top of hose (about 1/4"  from top edge), and into dingy edge. Screwed in #8 1 1/4" ssteel sheet metal screws. Use an electric screwdriver for God's sake. Also use those little decorative washers on top. Drill though hose on top, though dingy edge, then wrap bottom edge of hose underneath and hope the screw catches. Takes a couple tries in difficult spots. Also takes some tries to get hose in tight against dingy edge. Gets better the as you get farther along.  It would be possible to have screws only go through one layer of hose at the bottom thus hiding the screw tip. But I had a feeling that the hose might pop off after time, and occasionally a screw tip would punch through anyway, so I screwed right through the bottom. Took #10-24 ssteel nuts with nylon inserts and screwed them onto sheet metal screws. Now get this. The metal threads don't really catch, but they start great, and the nylon insert snugs up real nice and tight. Afterwards I used a  grinding wheel on a drill  to grind down the  screw tips. Voila! That hose is firmly secured & your fingers don't get snagged when lifting the dink. Beats the hell out of trying to snake #10 machine screws through predrilled holes. Screwed down the hose about every 3 inches, and closer at corners.

Also added ssteel u-bolts, two forward and two aft with painted backing plates (plywood) for future use to secure boat to cabin top or foredeck. By the way, Mad Scientist Experiment # 5,238: create a cabin top mounting system for dink similar to Lynn & Larry Pardy's dingy mount on that cool wooden boat they have. Also added a new reinforced bow eye, with mahogany backing plate because I envisioned loosing this $200 dink with the $100 worth of stainless hardware, when the old one broke.

Bought all sstainless at Lowe's--the absolute best prices and selection. There's also a 1" thick hardwood rub strake on the one inch molded keel, screwed and 3M 5200'd in place.

Probably more than you EVER wanted to know about the dingy project. But there you go.

Maybe I can answer any other questions off line;

Joe #499
"One Less Traveled"
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