new project / old boat. introducing " 'flite-risk "

['flite-risk]

So an old 1960 Uniflite 17' Express followed me home the other day. I came across this forum looking for information about them, so I figure I'll try to document my rebuild of this old boat on this forum. The boat is very rough. I've affectionately named her " 'flite-risk " for the time being. It was a craigslist find, $500 for the ez-loader trailer, boat, and a pair of matching Suzuki DT50 outboards that look like they are from the early '80's. Normally I ignore those kinds of ads, but this one was different because the owner actually had titles =). So I went and picked her up from near Hood Canal/Seabeck, WA and dragged her home to the Puyallup area on some 20 year old cracked and weathered trailer tires and with only a right turn signal functioning on the trailer lights (I love a good adventure, haha). The previous owner said he bought it in 2003 and it sat in his yard ever since; he'd attempted to replace the impeller on the suzuki that was bolted to the rotten transom, but didn't get the shift shaft disconnected before he pulled all the bolts out of the lower unit, so the lower unit is still hanging from the shift shaft the way he left it when he gave up. Doesn't really matter, that motor lived in the salt and is VERY corroded and nasty, I have my doubts it could be saved anyway. He picked up the other motor in much nicer condition a few years later but never got around to fixing the transom, so it sat in his shed. So far, I've stripped most of the hardware off the boat, thrown away the nasty old seats, destroyed about a hundred hornets nests in the boat, pulled the motor off the transom, cut the splashwell out to access the transom and floor/stringers and cut out some sections of the floor to inspect. Virtually every piece of wood in the boat is rotten/waterlogged, so I'm prepping to replace stringers, floor, cabin bulkhead, and transom as the first order of business. I suspect that might take me a while. I'm not calling this a "restoration" because I have no plans to keep it original or period-correct or anything like that; I just plan to make it into a clean functional boat I can take the family out in and do a little fishing from as well. Among my plans are to resize/shrink the rediculously enormous splashwell and create a little more deck space. I may mount a 6" or 8" setback bracket/jackplate for the motor and a swimstep to the new beefed up transom. I also plan to build out some storage and seating that uses the small space better. Basically, I'm going to reconfigure the whole boat to fit me. In other words, if you get squeamish at the thought of cutting up and modifying a classic old boat like this and splicing it back together in ways it was never meant to be done, you may not want to follow my build. You've been warned =)

-Drew T.

['flite-risk]

The pictures in the post above are from the C-list ad; that is basically what it looked like when I arrived except the guy weed-whacked the stuff growing around it and moved it out of the weeds where I could hook up to it. Here are some pics of what I've found: I don't think the transom is supposed to be curved, but it definitely is now. The bilge was absolutely full of wet wood debris to the point it plugged up the drain hole in the transom and plugged up the bilge pump back there. Also a pic of the pair of motors that came with it; reserving judgement for now as to whether either one will ever run again, but the one on the left looks a whole lot nicer than the one on the right that was on the boat.
-Drew T.

[Helmar]

Looks like a restore for sure. Good plans, make Yours!.
Might think about the FIberlay Flotation Foam for under the deck. Even if the replaced stringers were to go bad (not likely) the foam do to it being an Adhesive foam, would block most of any moisture from ever getting to them. Once the floor is in, glass cloth right onto the hull.

We still have a couple of members with Uniflites. John Nelson is one of them.
Instead of using marine plywood, John can tell you about using the Foam core panels. I plan on using those on my 59 Bell Boy. I converted my Bell Boy over to a Skagit style hull by replacing all the wood stringers with Fiberglass stringers. (I have a thread showing the restore on that)

I still have my Uniflite and the Only and I mean ONLY reason I would ever give her up is if I was to get my little Bell Boy put together. (Still holding onto several Bearcats).
By the way, mine does Fine with a 55hp Bearcat on the back but I try to keep her out of the salt. (I was also told that if I was to Zinc that up like the 4 stroke Honda saltwater engines, it would save her from the salt gods)

I got some Green Plywood that had been dried for several years (John Nelson, thank you) that I created my transom with. The rest of her will be the foam core board.
My boat will be Very lightweight and safe.

I have done several designs of the splashwells with narrowing up the splashwell and using storage openings on each side. Also, fold-down boarding/seating seats for them.

Oh, and that foam core board, you can bend that around a quart paint can, glass it and you can have a rounded radius and not square corners. Nice stuff.

I will surely be following your posts.

Helmar

['flite-risk]

Yes, I will be creating some water-tight compartments in the floor between the new stringers and filling them with closed cell polyurethane flotation foam. I think I will leave a small area at the stern around the center stringers open as a sump to collect and pump out any water with the bilge pump, other than that, foam everywhere in the bilge..

I was actually surprised that while the stringers are soaking wet and dark colored and rotten in a couple places, they still have some rigidity & strength to them in most places, the plywood floor on the other hand is falling apart from the underside. Pretty sure the stringers are very old and treated with chemicals that aren't available anymore for preserving wood. Either way, I will be replacing them in a way that the repair is something I only have to do once.

I'm debating using a composite foam board (something like coosa board) for the transom and stringers. It's expensive stuff, but so is good plywood and lumber these days.

-Drew T.

[Helmar]

What I found in a lot of boats around that year was they were using MDO plywood.
Most of bell boys and uniflites had flat transoms as I remember. Skagits on the other hand, 1/2" layup jacking each one in place on top of the other.
Good project and sounding like your on top of it.
Helmar

[Helmar]

I found a picture of John Nelsons Uniflite. He did some major modifications 1922_MASONLAKE07JohnBacksUniflite.jpg 1922_MASONLAKE07JohnBacksUniflite.jpg on the stern and decided he wanted more deck space. I like his setup.

['flite-risk]

After a few evenings of hard work, I've got the floor, cabin bulkhead and transom plywood all cleaned out of it and most of the hardware off the boat. Got a little more sanding and grinding to do on the transom to get the last stubborn bits of ply off the fiberglass. I was thinking of using coosa board, but in the interest of budget and time I went and found some good 3/4' plywood to double up for the transom and 2x lumber for the stringers. I've got epoxy resin and fiberglass supplies showing up UPS on Thursday, so hopefully not too much more demolition before the construction phase begins.
-Drew T.

[Helmar]

John Nelsons Uniflite. He did some modifications to the stearn for more room in the cockpit.

['flite-risk]

Neat, I like how he did that. I was envisioning something similar. I do think I will add a setback bracket/jackplate to move the motor back 6-8" and get some better adjustability of the running trim height and shorten up the splashwell to just what is needed to clear the motor when it is tilted up. I kinda like the rail he made all the way around the cockpit that keeps water out. The original rail seems like it channels anything that splashes on the bow right into the cockpit.

[John Nelson]

Epoxy gets expensive too You're going to need about 20 gallons of resin to put that thing back together . Joe has a lot of examples in his 16 bellboy repair. this site had a feature where you could look up all of a persons posts I have written a lot about repair, I couldnt get it to work, there are a couple more photos of my boat in a past called ten years after.

['flite-risk]

Epoxy gets expensive too You're going to need about 20 gallons of resin to put that thing back together . Joe has a lot of examples in his 16 bellboy repair. this site had a feature where you could look up all of a persons posts I have written a lot about repair, I couldnt get it to work, there are a couple more photos of my boat in a past called ten years after.

Yes it does get expensive (epoxy), but I will be using primarily epoxy because it adheres better and seals wood better long-term, and I'm just more familiar/comfortable with using it for composite layups. Like I said, I'd prefer to never have to do this job again. Also, I think your estimate of 20 gallons would be pretty accurate for Polyester or Vinylester, but I'm hoping to use far less with epoxy because I'll be using far less heavy/thick chop strand mat, which soaks up the bulk of the resin used when you work with PE or VE. Also, because epoxy adheres so much better, you can typically grind/sand your tapers into any repairs at a steeper angle because of the better adhesion needing less surface area to bond to, so repairs can be smaller and that saves resin as well.

One of the things I like about these old boats is that they were built with actual hand layups of cloth/woven rovings to an appropriate thickness for good strength without all the extra weight of an extra-thick chopper-gun style process. The boats are as strong as they need to be but still light enough for good performance with only moderate power. I intend to keep the boat light weight and strong, not turn it into a fiberglass tank that will only plow a ditch with one of my old 50hp motors.

This is my first time doing a complete boat restore on my own, but it's not my first rodeo with composite layups or fiberglass boat repairs. I used to work for a company that specialized in carbon fiber aerospace tooling and have some formal education on composites/plastics engineering. I have done many large infusion and vacuum bag layups with epoxy and carbon. That said, I really do appreciate any help and suggestions and ideas from you guys who have done this before, so I hopefully get it done right the first time and get it out on the water sooner.

In the interest of budget, I probably will use PE resin to laminate/seal some things like the new floor/deck and the new cabin bulkhead and any seats/storage/miscellaneous non-structural stuff I build and then just tab those items in using epoxy where needed.

-Drew T

[John Nelson]

Looks like your construction plan can work if you don't use any wood. The thickness you're talking about wont keep wood sealed over time. My posts only go back four years so I'll try to tell what I've done and other possibilities. It is possible to cut the whole bottom of the boat off at the flat spot at the chine, then fabricate a new modified v bottom using pvc foam and plywood methods that extends 2.5 feet past the transom. This would give you modern performance extra elbow room and a built in stand off for the motor.

['flite-risk]

John, that is certainly a cool idea, I've done pvc foam core sandwich panels before and I know they can be extremely strong. I'm not sure cutting out and rebuilding the entire hull below the chine will save me any resin though =), then again, maybe I'm just underestimating how much resin the wood stringers will soak up. I like your idea, but I think it is a little further than I want to go with the project. I don't mind the hull shape of this boat anyway. The "performance" I'm after is just a boat that gets up on plane quickly and easily with minimal power, which is exactly what these older nearly flat shallow v hulls do well. I don't care much about top speed, if it gets up onto plane and brings the bow down to a normal angle with a few people on board that's plenty fast. I don't mind slowing down to avoid slamming if the water is choppy. (my last boat was a flat bottom flat nosed jon boat, I liked it, it was a great little boat to fish out of and it would plane out and scoot along at a good clip with only a 5hp outboard, I only got rid of it to get something my whole family of 4 fits onto)

As far as the wood goes, these original stringers I'm replacing lasted a loooong time as they were made, they are waterlogged and heavy, but not terrible, the worst rot is at the stern ends (where they were not even covered with glass for the last couple inches), also found rot where the seat pedestals were lag-bolted to the stringers up front before the lags and seat pedestals rusted away. There are 2 factors that really killed all the wood in this boat:
1) the previous owner let it be a bird bath sitting in his yard uncovered for 18+ years collecting rainwater
2) whoever worked on this boat last made alot of unsealed and poorly sealed penetrations, the transom was swiss-cheesed with about a million little holes from mounting various motors/kickers/brackets/etc., the seats were lag-bolted to stringers without any trace of silicone, the deck was nailed down to the stringers, again with no trace of any sealant.

With even a thin layer of epoxy and glass that completely encapsulates the new wood and carefully potting/sealing any penetrations I make, it will be a big improvement over what was there before and I think it will most likely outlast my ability to use this boat. Filling the bilge with polyurethane expanding flotation foam should also help keep moisture away from the stringers and stiffen up the structure of the hull. The reality is this boat will spend 99% of its time sitting on the trailer when I'm done with it, it might get used half a dozen or up to a dozen times per year for quick day or weekend trips. The rest of the time, I'm pretty confident in my ability to keep it nose up under my carport and/or tarped up to keep the water out of it while it sits. It's a good thing so many folks don't seem to know how to keep a $20 tarp over their boats, or there wouldn't be nearly so many cheap/free boats on Craigslist for people like us that like to resurrect them.

I helped replace a transom in my parents 1976 19' bayliner quartermaster back in the 1990's as a teenager, we used good quality ply, we edge-sealed the whole way around with a generous amount of resin, we covered the whole thing in a few thin layers of glass, we carefully potted every penetration in the wood with resin and made sure every fastener had 5200 on it when it went in, the family friend who was the co-owner of that boat at that time that I helped to do that work took good care of the boat over the years and kept it covered and eventually bought out my parents interest in the boat and gave it to his son who is close to my age and who I know well. His son is still using it often to fish out of and tow his kids around on a tube from time to time, and that transom is still rock-solid and will be for a long time, so long as he keeps the water out of it.

I'm still waiting on my glass and resin to arrive, fingers crossed it should get here today. I got both layers of 3/4 ply dry-fitted on the transom last night and started working on my strategy to clamp them in place when I bond them in. Still need to sand a little more to give some generous room to tab it in to clean glass all the way around. Slowly making progress.

-Drew T

[John Nelson]

The splash well was missing from My boat so i made the hull look like one of the inboards. The top of the bracket is 1.5 " out farther than the bottom cause the motor would not trim down past level. the cavitation plate is set 1.5" above the bottom of the boat cause the water comes up past the transom. Dad had a runabout that took water in the cockpit so I made the combing. I used .5 5# urathane foam for everything except the bottom of the bunk when I ran out of money that piece was too heavy and the transom marine fir plywood. I bagged .5 foam into the impact area of the hull then covered it with mat and roving. The stringers were foam covered with three layers of mat and roving. I lowered the deck in the cabin for headroom and raised the deck in the cockpit for better self bailing. I think the boat weighs 200 pounds more than original and 400 pounds less than it did with all the saturated plywood and foam. the deck and bulkhead are .5 foam with mat and roving on each side.

[John Nelson]

Some of the wood boats used stand off designs you might be able to use with your reduced splash well norseman ladyclipper mansfield. I dont recomnend permanent stern seating for travel your 3&4 passengers weight would be better used in the cabin. Did you use any wood in your laminations at work? Is there any synthetic material you can use from your work to make stringers out of?

['flite-risk]

I'm glad you mentioned that you lowered the cabin deck height for headroom, I am thinking of doing the same.

At work we did not typically include any lumber in the laminations, using it for structure and tabbing the laminate to it was common though for less expensive low tolerance low cycle tooling.

I do have a big stack of flat 12"x16" carbon fiber panels that are all roughly 0.080"-0.100" thick. They were machining test panels I used at work to develop some best practices for surface machining carbon tooling. They all started out as carbon/epoxy infusion layups approximately .400" thick and were trimmed to size on a waterjet (out of scraps from other projects) and then machined to thickness on one or both sides testing a variety of carbide and pcd cutters. The material is extremely dense and well compacted. I could cut them down and bond them together to form a stringer and glass over that I suppose. I'd go through a metric crap ton of saw blades or cutoff wheels to cut that stuff and it would probably be every bit as heavy as wood in the end but it certainly wouldn't ever rot.

Or I could also form temporary molds in the hull to pour some foam stringers with polyurethane pour foam in place and glass over that. I do have some 2lb pour foam on hand from a previous project and I'm planning to buy some 4lb to put under the deck, but that stuff gets expensive fast too.

Honestly, I think I am still leaning toward just rebuilding the stringers from wood more or less as they were originally and doing my best to seal them well. It really seems like the quickest/easiest/cheapest path to getting on the water.

-Drew T.