N12 Planet - Plugging the leaks and an external repaint

[Stephen Hawkins]

All,

With this sunny weather we have been having, I think it is time I bought Planet (N12 672) home and stripped the outside of the hull of paint - its starting to crack and flake anyway. I need to make her a little more water tight. She is of a nailed wood on frame construction.

I am planning to strip the paint off with a heat gun and scraper (well my son Chris is) and then we are going to look at fixing any cracks in the planks with epoxy, etc, and perhaps, tighten up any obviously loose nails/rivets. But the joins between the planks, I think I am going to used a sealer (flexible sticky black stuff out of a sealing gun) rather than trying to epoxy those joins. It is after all a nailed clinker, not a glued clinker.

Any thoughts .......Chris?

Cheers

[Mikey]

Definitely do not use "sticky black goo" or siicone sealer. Ensure planks well up to ribs (may need to renew some copper nails). Epoxy is fine along lands- gouge out and run in Wests (or equivalent) and then some thickened epoxy.

Mike Liggett

[Stephen Hawkins]

Although I definitely will not be using anything silicone, I am not happy with gluing a nailed boat.

Cheers

[chris]

When I bought Planet she had been restored and I know that the person had used tape and probably epoxy to repair some cracks and was told that the paint was an outdoor gloss rather than marine. She leaked then and I did replace one or two ribs which cured the problem. I expect some more ribs have cracked by now. renew broken ribs is the first thing to do.
Be aware that a heat gun could well crack some planks and make things worse.

[Stephen Hawkins]

Thanks for the input chaps,

I do have one broken rib.

Bad news about the heat gun, especially with the dumming down of paint strippers these days.

So I will have to be careful.

Its started to rain, which is one way of saying that I will have to give it some more thought

Ho hum.

[chris]

More a case of 'be aware' than don't use a heat gun. Take care, don't hold it closer than you need and keep moving. It's not too difficult to scorch the timber anyway.