I've been working on a dead man's boat for a while now. Before he died he asked me to take it away. I might have told the back story here before so I'll try to make it short.
My buddy Gary tried to get me to buy his boat a few times. His son had taken it all apart all and then had to "go away." Gary (retired old Vietnam era vet) would walk out and start to work on it, but lose heart. One day he called me up and told me to get it out of his driveway. He was tired of looking at it.
I didn't want it. I've got to many projects in the works, and two more boats I want to build from scratch. The last thing I wanted was another project. When I heard the tone in his voice I knew the only right thing to do was to give him a few bucks and let it sit in my driveway. I figured I could quadruple my money if I sold the outboard and scrapped the hull for salvage.
The thing is in the back of my mind I wanted to put it back together and take him fishing in his old boat. I started working on it, but very slowly over the course of a few years. Then Gary's cancer came back. He had almost ten good years in remission, but it came back bad. This time the docs said they could try chemo, but don't count on it.
One day I called him to ask a few questions... I was working on it again because I knew Gary's cancer was going to kill him this time. His daughter answered and said this was it. If I wanted to see him come now. I spent a couple hours with my friend holding his hand and babysitting his grandson while his daughter got away to run some errands and do some necessary shopping. That was his last day on earth. His daughter called me the next day to let me know he was gone.
I guess that wasn't so short after all. I've been working on it lately. I'm making it "better" or maybe extending the time before it goes to the scrap heap. All the wood had to go. It had a plywood sole and plywood decks in an aluminum boat. Its okay if you don't mind re-carpeting every couple years, and re-decking periodically. I got rid of all that plywood. used a plasma cutter to blow out all the steel screws that should have never been used, and built the sub floor structure on the sole. I put all that back together with stainless steel closed end blind rivet.
More recently I took out all the foam, and vacuumed out all the debris. Then I cut a one piece sole out of 0.080" aluminum sheet, laid it in placed, and drilled all the rivet holes to secure it to the ribs. Then I took it back out.
I vacuumed out all metal chips from drilling holes, stuck the decent foam blocks back in place and prepared to pour some more flotation foam. The foam I'd had on the shelf for a dozen years wasn't any good any more. Today I finally poured some more foam, and laid the sole back in place.
I knew it was going to be a difficult task, but I'm forcing the holes back into alignment for another round of closed end stainless blind rivets to nail down the sole. I'm about half done. I started by using some punches to align some holes in the back, secured just one rivet, and then I forced some holes into position on the front. So with leverage and a hammer I've gotten every hole to line up well enough I could atleast tap the rivet into place with a hammer. Over half the rivets are in.
Before anybody tells me stainless can still react with aluminum in a wet environment. Yes. Yes it can. Not like plain steel, copper, or some other metals, but it can very slowly. This is a fresh water application so more slowly than that even, and this is inside the boat. Not through the hull. I have regular aluminum rivets, a buck and an air hammer for those applications. Also, about 75% of the original aluminum rivets that held the sub floor structure (ribs and rib stiffeners) had broken. The stainless rivets won't break any time soon.
Well, I guess my break is over. I gotta go put in the rest of those rivets.