Mike's 77 22-2 Rebuild

[mshugg]

Your box looks good.  It’s amazing how much storage can be created along the centerline of tThe we boats.

[RickK]

Yeah, pic two is the box sitting in place. I tried to make it as big as I could to maximize storage but still small enough that I could fit it in at an angle and pull it up into place.  Of course it turned out about two inches too big so I had to resort to slightly more drastic measures.   



Should be plenty easy to fix once it is all glued up and it will also give me access to hook up a drain hose.

Ahhh, slight of hand shenanigans - I didn't look closely at the tank area to see the liner was propped. 
That's a good plan now that I see it in action 

[Tampa Bay Mike]

Ahhh, slight of hand shenanigans - I didn't look closely at the tank area to see the liner was propped. 
That's a good plan now that I see it in action 


That is actually the other hatch up on the casting deck, not the tank hatch. The front deck is almost 8 feet long which will be awesome for fishing and when the kids are up there. Not sure if the stringers in the family fisherman model were different from the other models but I just followed where they stepped up.

[Tampa Bay Mike]

I got the anchor locker epoxied up into place the other night and glued in a drain. I put the lid back in and hopped up and down on it and it didn't budge. I was considering installing a drain hose with a thru hull right out the side but it would be pretty close to the waterline if not below it due to the depth of the box so I may just skip it. I can always just put a plug in when I don't want water draining straight into the bilge for now and install one later if I decide to. I'm going to add an access panel to the big hatch box before I fix it to make that easy to do.



I also started playing with gelcoat a little bit. I shot one of the hatch covers with 50/50 gel and duratech, rolled one and sprayed pva on it, and rolled one with no pva. Plan is to see which way is the easiest to work with before I move onto the deck.

[RickK]

Makes perfect sense now that I see it. I don't think anything is much easier than the gel/duratech.

[Tampa Bay Mike]

I feel like I have 20 things that are all half done so I'm trying to focus in on one or two to get them knocked out. I got some duratech and gelcoat about a week ago so I'm getting the hullsides cleaned up so I can get them sprayed. I've done a few test shots on the hatch covers and I'm getting the hang of it.





I'm also getting closer with the hardtop. I am pretty happy with how it is turning out.

[RickK]

Looking good - what is on the hard top right now?

[Tampa Bay Mike]

I rolled on a thick layer of gelcoat with about 15% duratech. I'll let it cure for a few days while I work on the hull and then give it a good sanding and touch up. Then if I have enough of the hullside color leftover I will do the underside with that. If not I'll just use white because custom color tinted gel is not cheap!

[RickK]

You don't mix it yourself? I started with white gel and a couple jars of coloring and a toothpick. If I wanted blueish color I dip the toothpick into the blue color and then stir it around in the gelcoat can - mix all the gelcoat at one time. Repeat until you get the color you desire, one toothpick at a time and stir with paint stick. The color that you add is very concentrated.
If you are trying to match the original color, disregard - you need a few different color jars, like red, yellow, blue and a lot of trial time. I agree, getting it mixed to match is expensive.

[Tampa Bay Mike]

No, I found a color that I really liked and just had them mix it up. I figured this way if I ever needed more I could get it made easily with the same code. Now, had I bothered to ask how much more it was I may have gone a different route. Oh well, it's only money and it will hopefully be the only one like it.

[RickK]

For the layman it's trial and error. that translates into a lot of failures and wasted product. I haven't seen a mix chart for colors on gelcoat - there must be one somewhere. Meaning 2 parts green, 4 parts yellow and one part red for this color, etc.

[Tampa Bay Mike]

Had a friend come over this morning to help out and we got the hullsides sprayed. Used a 50/50 duratech mix in the ol HF gun and it laid out pretty nicely.

[RickK]

Sweet.

[Capt.Joe]

The boat looks great! How many coats of gel coat do you plan on spraying? Will you be using non-wax gel on the base coats, then wax in the final spray?

Did you have any issues with spraying outdoors?

[Tampa Bay Mike]

Thanks Capt! I used duratech which let's it fully cure without PVA or a waxed layer on top. It also thinned it down really nice for spraying. It was expensive but worth it for me.

I sprayed one layer over the whole thing and then went back over some of the thinner looking spots before it fully cured.  I honestly don't think it'll need more since the gelcoat underneath was still in really good shape so this was mainly just to add color. I am probably just going to do some buffing and touch it up if needed.

I lucked out with the weather too so spraying outside was good. I have a decent sized yard and the wind really laid down yesterday and was blowing away from anything important.