Dinghy repair
1 This is how she looked on eBay – quite cute for a project boat.
2 It would be fair to say that most of the wood fell off! It didn’t take long to strip the hull of everything, although I kept the thwart to maintain some stability.
3 Old paint removal was the most onerous task. Whatever it was it didn’t move easily. Paint stripper didn’t succeed, and I ended up using scrapers.
4 During scraping I had doubts about the integrity of the transom – and I was right. Encapsulated in GRP it proved rotten, so I had to cut it out and replace it.
5 I had a piece of mahogany that only needed a bit of trimming to make fit. I added a cut out for sculling – as there had been on the old transom.
6 Using West System epoxy and glass mat I glassed it in place, extending the glass mat around the corners to provide extra strength.
7 The inner keel had also rotted away, so I shaped some hardwood and glassed it in, wedging it down in place from the underside of the thwart.
8 The floor seemed quite weak, so I used some plywood to make strengthening pads. These were shaped to allow easier glassing in.
9 My local joiner machined some strips of 6mm hardwood for me to laminate the gunwales – one strip on the inside and two outside.
10 I’d measured the original rowlock positions and used offcuts of the gunwale strips to create the laminated pads before glueing them in.
11 To fit the rowlock all I had to do was drill a hole from top to bottom. There’s a lot of added strength using this laminate gunwale method.
12 I continued the hardwood gunwale strip around the bow and transom, ensuring it was deep enough to plane and sand back to match the sides.
13 There was a hole in the bow which needed fixing. I had a small hatch cover, so cut a hole for that which allowed me access to glass some matting on the inside of the hull.
14 I used a Dremel tool to clean up the hole from the outside, and then added more mat and resin – you can see the glass already moulded from the inside – as a ‘scaffolding’ for the repair.
15 I only had a GRP repair kit to hand, so I used this two-part mix to fill the hole, making sure I kept it lower than the outer surface to allow for a fair surface when the gelcoat is flowed over the top.
16 From the same kit I mixed the two-part gelcoat, and made sure I’d filled the remaining hole slightly proud so it could be sanded fair to a good finish when cured.
17 It’s not the best job in the world, but for a first-time GRP repair I was satisfied with it. ‘A blind man on a galloping horse wouldn’t see it’, as they say in these parts.
18 I had a thicker strip of hardwood for the keel strip. I lined up the keel line under the truss off my workshop, applied a generous bead of marine mastic, and laid the pre-drilled strip on top...
19 ... before wedging it in place with broom handles and anything else I could muster. Held steady the stainless steel screws could be made fast through the hull and into the inner keel.
20 The U-bolt tow eye on the bow is an example of my over-engineering. The original GRP was thin, so I glassed in some mesh then just shaped some hardwood into an attractive inner pad.
21 I made another hardwood pad for the outside. I think it looks pretty neat, and helpfully it covers the old towing-eye holes which had become elongated through wear.
22 Then it was time to get painting. I used Dulux primer on the hull. It’s meant for high gloss front doors, covers very nicely and has a good finish – and it’s a lot cheaper than marine paints.
23 For the floor of the dinghy I used garage floor paint – but not before I’d also glassed over the inner keel to keep the water out. Floor strengthening pads are also obvious in this view.
24 I used International Woodskin on the gunwales, the forward thwart and inner and outer tow eye pads. It’s a great finish and should last longer than traditional varnishes.
25 To topcoat the hull I used plain old household paint – the boat is not going to spend a lot of time in the water, after all. I got an incredible finish and the sheen was amazing.
26 I added some black rope to the corners, along with some fenders. I used a £1 piece of scrap leather attached with copper nails to line the sculling cut-out – very traditional.
27 Here’s the finished article. The last job was to replace the thwart – which had seen better days – with a plank of stronger pine. Finally I painted the blades of the oars black to match.