Hi all,
Bought this 99' Osprey 245 this past year and have loved it so far. When I made the purchase, I knew parts of the deck were soft and it would be something to be done over the winter. Well - the winter is here and would love to get any thoughts on how to tackle this project.
First piece: I have reconstructed several boats, so I'm quite handy when it comes to boat reconstruction - fiberglass work, etc. However, I have no experience with cored decks - all my previous rebuilds have been plywood decks straight onto the stringers.
I looked at the one other 245 Osprey rebuild on the form (link below), and it looks like the deck was cut straight through, filled with plywood onto the stringers, then the original top layer of the desk was puttied back on in place.
https://classicaquasport.com/smf/index.php?topic=7421.0Similar to the above reconstruction, I would love to save the top layer of the deck, as I think the textured deck when it was originally laid in the mold is a nice touch. However, I was under the assumption that with a cored deck, the only way to go about it was to very carefully remove the top layer of deck (without going through the bottom layer of fiberglass), core out the old Balsa (I think its balsa, or so I've read), re-core it, then very carefully re-glass it back in.. Seeing the gentleman cut straight through the deck in the rebuild above makes me feel better that thats an option (as thats what I've done with all my other decks), but I dont want to cut all the way through and be screwed.
I guess the concept of rebuilding a cored deck is what I don't fully understand. My assumption was that you had to "re-core it" and couldn't just lay down on the stringers, but this guy obviously did.
Any help / thoughts would be greatly appreciated! Happy to supply more pictures if needed.
