[Public-List] Bilges and Hull Painting

[Rachel]

Hi Jonathan,

I completely removed the "false bilge" from my (ex) A-30, #221.  Fuel had apparently seeped down into it over the years and I could not get rid of the smell by cleaning the bilge.  So I removed the engine and you know what came next....

I believe I have posted extensively on it in the past - you may find that by searching the archives.  If not, drop me a line and I'll see if I can find it in my outgoing mail files.

Synopsis:

I removed all of the wood and cementitious material that formed the "false bilge" and got down to plain fiberglass.  The wood/filler was obviously meant to smooth over the transition from ballast pig to bilge, but it was not executed in a way that would resist the realities (on mine the top of it was just a pour of neat resin, which had cracked, probably in 1968...).

Once I had it all removed (and it was all gross, and the source of the smell in my boat that never would have gone away), I thought about how to put it back.  I could either build it back like it was, but with better methods, or do it a different way.  I chose the different way and had no regrets, as I felt it made the boat slightly more functional (and I had to do some work either way).

Another piece to the puzzle was that the ballast pig itself was not well sealed (erm... not really sealed at all).  The after end was simple exposed to the "false bilge," and the top was covered over somewhat half-heartedly with thin cloth and resin that had long since failed.  Luckily my boat was dry/freshwater, so the pig was in good condition.

So, what I did was fair the new, deeper bilge (so I now had a sump aft of the ballast pig), and build and glass in a "wall" sealing off the after end of the pig (there is a ~6" vertical "wall" of ballast on the after end of the pig).  I made the wall of pre-formed GRP board from McMaster-Carr, then used biaxial cloth and epoxy to glass it into place.  I also put a bit of fairing and a minor strip of glass at the after end of the sump (which had been under the false section), just to make it smooth and easy to keep clean.

At the same time, I glassed over the top of the ballast pig (forward, under the saloon sole).

As a result I had an "honest," solid glass bilge, the ballast pig was sealed off, and as a bonus, the small sump (that used to be inside the false bilge) made a perfect place for the bilge pump, and held most nuisance water from going into the "upper bilge" over the ballast pig.

I don't think I would ever want to do the job again, but on the other hand I wouldn't really change any of what I did if I were going to do another one. (I certainly did agonize over it before commencing though.)

Rachel
ex-#221

PS: What I believe may be the reason for the "false bilge":  Apparently there was a ballast mold for pouring Whitby's folkboat ballast pig.  Of course the A-30 needed more ballast.  So they used forming to build up the mold and make the ballast "taller." Hence it ended up with a bit of a "wall" at the after end.  They may have placed that vertical "septum" in the false bilge (was something like a pine 2" x 6" on my boat) to hold the ballast in place as they were building the boat. Since Whitby was usually being held a bit to the fire on pricing for the A-30's (common for boat-builders, and especially for the A-30 where groups form various regions were doing group buys), they had to minimize extra labor when building, and building the bilge the way they did -- by leaving the septum in, filling in with cementitious material, and pouring resin over the top -- was less time-consuming/materials-intensive than the way I did it.

On Mar 12, 2012, at 8:48 PM, Jonathan Adams wrote:

> First of all thanks for all the comments on hull painting. I read them all. However,  no sooner had I started sanding the hull, and committed to a hull job, then I discovered a new feature of the old boat!


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