Another Bellboy 21

[Guest]

Hi everybody. I've been a lurker here for... I'm not sure how long, but years.

Almost four years ago, I came within about a week of buying a fiberglass classic boat from Marty Loken and having him restore it. I inquired about a Farralon 20, but it was bought before I could get it. A couple weeks later Marty contacted me about a 1959 Bellboy 21 that had become available, but during that time I had picked up a Starcraft 21 aluminum cuddy cabin.

A few years go by, I don't have the Starcraft anymore, and I've been watching for a boat like the Bellboy. What do you know- it came back to Marty and he put it up for sale again! I think I bought it within an hour or so of him posting the ad. On this site.

But I was still living in Los Angeles. In June my wife and I moved to Eureka. We had to do some work, but finally I was able to pick up the Bellboy. I bought a Ford F150 just so I could tow it. Last weekend we picked it up and brought it back here to California. I love the lines, but it does need work. Lots and lots of work.

Here's what it looks like today, sitting in my driveway. The trailer's too small but it got it here.

The first picture shows the overall lines. I love it. Second is the cockpit- floor gone, frames gone, most of the side reinforcements gone. The rest is the interior. The floors, frames, and cabinetry are all disasters but enough remains that I can at least use them for patterns. The fiberglass liners appear to be all or mostly there. Most of the plywood in the cabin framing is decent, but around the forward windows it's rotted to nothing. I could probably destroy what's left with my fingernails. The transom was redone- not the best quality plywood, but Marty says with a lot of penetrating epoxy I don't have to redo it. And that cool steering console.

Sadly the framing for all the curved windows are gone, so I'll have to learn how to bend plexiglass and aluminum. Rather a lot of plexiglass. Or something- I'm not sure what.

So finally, I'm not a lurker. I'm another poor soul, enslaved to a dream. Look at me with pity.




Ed

[Helmar]

Well, it now looks as we can really Welcome you to the group as a non lurker

You might have the last one available for 21 footers.
I know Marty should have a ton of pictures to share other one we did.

[BruceDrake]

photos available

Ed
If you want pictures of anything that Marty did in restoring my BB21 please let me know. Or come visit Portland some time and see for your self. Nice to know the other known BB21 will be restored.

As a side comment on Eureka. Just like Bellingham you have a Fairhaven and even squeezed in an Indianola from Puget Sound.

[Guest]

Ed
If you want pictures of anything that Marty did in restoring my BB21 please let me know. Or come visit Portland some time and see for your self. Nice to know the other known BB21 will be restored.

As a side comment on Eureka. Just like Bellingham you have a Fairhaven and even squeezed in an Indianola from Puget Sound.

Thanks for the offer. I probably will take you up on that, when I'm farther along.

Of course you and Marty and the rebuilding team set an impossibly high standard to meet. But at least when it's done I'll have the second-nicest Bellboy 21 around.

[Guest]

I haven't been able to get a lot done in the last week. I'm refinishing a dresser, which has been going slower than I planned. I tried stripping the finish with some green environmentally-sensitive stuff. Only problem is, it doesn't work. Instead of removing the old varnish it turns it into a very gummy putty that dries like concrete. But the first mate wants this dresser in the house, and the first mate has been very supportive of my insane boat lust. I want to keep her happy.

I'm fortunate to live twenty minutes away from a lumberyard (Almquist Lumber in Arcata) that stocks a decent supply of boatbuilding lumber. They don't have one inch Okume 1088 but they do stock half inch. Well 12 mm. So last week I got six sheets. Two I had them rip to nine inches x eight feet, and I laminated those to 24 mm. That will do all the floor frames, and I should get able to get the side frames out of the cutoff.

I think they made some mistakes on my boat. The attached photos show where one of the frames was. The cockpit frame was completely rotted away. A previous owner removed one side of the fiberglass which has encapsulated it, and the rotted plywood. What you are looking at is the remaining fiberglass layer. The Bellboy floor uses the fiberglass stringers with no wood- although the frames were wood and there is a single wood stringer on center. But as you can see, for some silly reason they stopped the stringers at each frame! It's not quite useless, but almost. Marty says the in the other Bellboy 21 (Bruce Drake's museum piece, see http://www.classicboatclub.com/forum...hlight=bellboy) the stringers continue the length of the boat.

Second, look at the hole going through the remaining fiberglass. That's the limber holes, for water to drain to the stern. It's clean- no protruding bits where the limber holes where bedded in resin. Also the top is clean-they fiberglassed the sides of the frames but not the top, then drilled holes through! Thus guaranteeing that the frames would stay wet. No wonder the user stopped using the boat. When I get to that I'm going to glass the stringer so they are continuous front to back, make new frames from 1088 Okume completely encased in glass, then foam under the deck. And deck will be two layers of 12 mm Okume. She may float an inch lower in the water but the new framing is NOT going to rot.

Marty's advice was to protect the transom first. I'm prepping, and this weekend I plan to saturate it all around with thinned epoxy. Let it cure for a week, then next weekend I'll add (Marty's advice again) another 1/2 inch layer and start glassing it. All right, 12 mm. It's already 2 1/4 inch thick, so it's going to be massive.

[Sammamish1]

Boy that black and yellow boat sure looks familiar

[Guest]

Boy that black and yellow boat sure looks familiar

I know it came into Marty's possession at least twice. Are you a previous owner?

I'm having to jump through some hoops to register it here in California, but once it's registered it's not going back on the market. Not for a very long time, anyway.

[Sammamish1]

almost an owner once.

[Mark_Denis]

I owned it once... briefly... until I realized I had way too many projects going.

I'm happy to see that it's going to be finished this time! :GoodJob:

Save yourself a lot of headaches and use rubber seals for the plexi windows. It's MUCH easier than trying to make your own aluminum frames! You can get a chrome insert that still gives it the "look" without the hassle of aluminum frames.

Here's a pic of what it looks like on my BB.

[Guest]

Thanks Mark! I've been thinking about how best to do that. I like that a lot better than new aluminum frames. I expect it to be difficult enough just getting the plexiglass bent properly.

[Guest]

I haven't gotten as much as I would like done over the last two weeks. I spent a significant amount of time on refinishing this dresser. We bought it ten years ago from a place in L.A. They were a moving and storage company, and they had so much old abandoned furniture they opened a little shop. Quality varied from moderately good to awful. I was between jobs at the time, so I went for cheap. It has this dark red stain, so dark you could barely see any grain. And it was cracked and weatherbeaten and peeling. I wouldn't let it into our house up here until it was refinished. Now it's done. Looks to me like a nice bird's-eye maple, but I'm not expert on wood.

I've been working on the cockpit area. The transom plywood stuck up about half an inch above the fiberglass, so I cut that down. Then sanded, scraped and brushed around the edges, and saturated with penetrating epoxy. I'm letting it sit for a week, then I'll put a layer of un-thinned epoxy on it.

I've made template for the cockpit frames from 1/4 and doorskin ripped into strips, assembled in place with a hot melt glue gun. You just have a stack of doorkskin strips and break them off to length. See one of them. I got the idea from Marty. Thank you. I think it can be done better. I hope to do one more frame over the weekend, and I'm going to make it a bit differently. I've got four frames cut to this state, and there's one more needed were the cabin door meets the cockpit. The frames are two 12mm Okume plywood laminated with epoxy. Man that stuff is heavy.

A word of advice if you're making these frames. Wear leather work gloves. You won't burn your fingers, and when one of the doorskin-strip edges are rough you can just rub it on the glove to clean it up. Very fast.

The other thing I've been doing is preparing the floor. Picture #3 shows how the floor was at each frame. The fiberglass stringerss were interrupted, and there was a fairly deep cavity. Hard to clean.

Picture #4 shows what I'm doing at each stringer. I've got three of the frames done. This will let me glass them, and also makes it a lot easier to get all the rotten wood out. There's still a bunch in the corners. Once they are all like this and I have the trames marked to the shape, I'll start fiberglassing. There are half a dozen places where the stringers are damaged. So first I'm going to patch all the breaks, so all eight stringers are solid and undamaged up to the cabin bulkhead. Then a layer(maybe two, I haven't decided) of six-inch glass table, continuous from stern to bulkhead. That will give at least double the designed reinforcement, which is probably double what it actually had.

More to come. Wish me luck

[Helmar]

Nice work !!

Sounds like you got it going on.
Just in case, are you thinking of foaming it?

I did a bell boy 19 that had sand in her belly and for some reason, most of the stringers would crack if even stepped on.
I found 10 or more that I used some 4" fiberglass cloth on in between frames.

I also foamed it in which I ran two plastic water pipes from the cabin to the stern.

Here, this might help.
This is the structure work on a Bell Boy 19, which I found to almost the same as the other Bell Boy owned by Bruce Drake. That was my project at Island Boat Shop.

Here is the link.

www.windriverfarm.us/joe/bellboy/index.html

[Guest]

Yes, I am absolutely going to foam the bottom and much of the sides. (If it gets a hole I want it float AND not roll upside down.) Thanks for the link. Very nice work!

You'll notice that on yours the stringers go the length of the boat. Marty said that on Bruce Drake's they also went the full length. On mine they don't, and stringer on one side of a frame don't necessarily quite line up with the next. Maybe they were experimenting with ways to reduce labor. But when I'm done it's going to be much better reinforced than it was.

I particularly appreciate the pictures of the framing. Answers some questions. And I had decided to run some pvc pipe from the bow to the stern, but it's good to see someone else has already done it. I like the idea of two pipes rather than the one I was going to use.


Ed

[Helmar]

Another little trick I did is I wanted that foam to stick to Everything under the deck so I pressure washed the inside of the hull, then wiped it down with thinner. After beefing up some of the stringers, I kept mixing up resin and coating the whole inside of the hull. Pretty much went though a gallon.

I did this while keeping in mind not to add any more weight to the project.
Batteries were moved forward and the stock tanks were forward so I put the tanks forward as well.

I might have some stock pictures of the Bell Boy 21 that showed what the insides looked like before we gutted it out. I was the lead guy on that boat at Island Boat Shop. I know every inch of that boat too

[Guest]

My compliments on the other Bellboy 21. That is a work of art. I've only seen the photos, but I've never seen a more beautiful boat.

Like your 19, mine will have to work. I plan to do a lot of fishing, and some cruising. I plan to keep the original internal layout- the original interior is there. I'll pull it all out- some may be restorable, but I assume it will all be patterns for new builds.

I plan to put both tanks and batteries midships as you say. I don't like having a lot of weight aft, and the motor is plenty. I plan to go with big tanks- like eighty gallons. So I don't want balance to shift as fuel burns. I don't have a pressure washer, so I plan to scrub everything with a wire brush. First soap and water, then denatured alchohol, then a wipe with acetone. The exposed fiberglass is seriously nasty. Far beyond filthy.

I'm planning to do a two-layer floor. 12mm 1088 just like your photo, then a second 12MM ply with no holes. I figure between the thicker floor, the weight of the Okume (that stuff is heavy), and the foam I'll add a couple hundred pounds. The standard tanks were I believe 40 gallons, so that's another 250 pounds plus. But that weight will be mostly low and doesn't move around, and on that big a boat it shouldn't be a problem. Oh... I need a radar arch. More weight, and that's high. I live in fog country, so that's a safety issue. Plus it makes night running practical.

On the other hand, I'll rarely go out with more than two people, so I'm not concerned about this amount of weight. Still will be less than the factory weight with an inboard.