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I have been involved in a full restoration of a 1988 35ft Duffy that I've been meaning to post here for some time. The actual restoration started 7 months ago so I'll have to one, large update right now to bring all of this up to date. I purchased the boat last October (indirectly) from an insurance company after the boat was involved in a fire. The truck cabin, main cabin, sole and wash boards were totally destroyed. When I say "totally destroyed" that is exactly what I mean. There was no rebuilding any of these structures ..... all of it needed to be removed and rebuilt from scratch. The hull was structurally sound and thsi is the only reason taht I got involved in this project. There was SOME fiberglass delaminating of the hull above the sole but nothing that couldn't be fixed with some sweat. There was no fire-effects on the hull below the sole and obviously below the waterline.
The boat came with a cat 3208t and a TD 507 transmission and each had about 9200hrs but reportly ran "great" before the fire. The engine was cosmetically in very poor condition. All of the wires were toast. Any aluminium or plastic on the engine was also toast. Plus the fuel pump was toast. But at least I had the engine, transmission, shaft and wheel. The engine and transmissioon were removed and rebuilt.
Like I said already, I purchased the boat in October 2007 under great protest from my father who looked at the boat and said "you gotta be F'ing nuts to buy that piece of charcoal" and my wife saw it pull up the driveway and walked back inside without saying a word.....the silence was very loud. The boat was delivered 10/17/2007 and work began right away. Within the first week, the I removed all of the debris from the boat filling at least 15 industrial sized trash bags - removed were parts of a liferaft, old fishing tackle, USCG safety gear, a Wagner helm, compass, electronics, clothing, food, ropes, etc, etc. More stuff than I care to remember. On the 2nd week, I had removed the cabins and all of the washboards. Next came up the sole. Since I had come so far already, I decided to replace all of the deck beams even though they didn't appear that old and were in fine shape. Then the messy part started .... cutting out the delaminated portions of fiberglass. The Duffy appeared to have about 8 layers throughout the hull above the WL. In the forepeak, I had to remove just 1 or 2 layers until I got to solid glass. In the main cabin, I had to remove about 4 layers and the same for the ****pit. I just kept on removing layers until I was 100% certain that I had gotten down to solid glass taht had no heat distortion or no ill-effects from cracking or drying.
After getting down to clean glass, I started rebuilding. For construction, I bought a roll (110 linear yds) of 1708 biaxial and, 70 gallons of RAKA epoxy (great stuff BTW, easy to apply, great wetting properties, little tendency to blush and about 1/2 the cost of West). I replaced proportional numbers of layers as were removed but I believe that the hull in now probably stronger than original given the strength properties of epoxy. Some may ask "why didn't you use polyester since the boat is made of poly". Well, newly laid poly won't bond to old-cured poly with any degree of reliability plus I was certain, that despite my best efforts, that there was still some dirt/smoke in the fiberglass hull. Epoxy would be less sensitive to this dirt compared to poly.
Also, right after removing the sole, I also removed the 3208 and had it MOH'ed by our local Cat shop. About 5 weeks later, they had the engine running like NEW, rebuilt the transmission, and replaced the fuel pump plus a few other parts that were fire affected. They gave me a 1 year warranty on the MOH so I'm pretty happy with that.
Anyway, concurrent to the MOH, and after rebuilding the hull, I replaced the deck beams, installed a new wet exhaust (the old boat had a dry) installed a new fir plywood sole (installed with 5200 and #12x2" SS screws) and fiberglassed the new deck to the hull with biaxial/RAKA.
Next was to build the truck cabin which took about 3 weeks of part-time work but was eventually completed. I didn't want any roof beams (carlings) inside the cabin so I made a 10x12ft jig with a 4.5" over 10ft camber and bent 2 layers of 1/2" A/A grade fir plywood over the jig with a bond of epoxy between each layer. This layer of epoxy allowed the two layers of plywood to hold the original camber after removed from the jig. Plywood was a fine construction material for the small truck cabin (strong, impact resistant) but too heavy for the roof of the main cabin. For this, I used the same jig but used 2" nidacore as a base material with 2 layers of biaxial on the topside and 1 layer on the inside. After the 3rd layer, I removed from the jig and the entire roof (10x12ft) weighted about 250lbs plus the roof was as stiff as steel "I" beam. A great choice for a large cabin roof.
After constructing the 2 cabin bulkheads and putting into place, I recruited the help of friends and we lifted the 2 roofs into place. Both were secured with 1708 tabs on the inside and out.
And this is about where I am current located. I started building the windshield last Monday and have only completed the center 2 windows and each of these frames are also tabbed into place. Hopefully this week I will complete the other 2 windows and also install.
I'll try to be more reliable in posting frequent threads updating on progress. It'll be good to look back on all of this at the projects completion and see how it all went. Thus far, I have about 7 months of time invested working just on weekends and after work as time allows. Fortunately I have an understanding and patient wife who puts up with all of this nonsense.
Many of you have helped me tremendously with your ideas, suggestions and for this help I am greatly appreciative. If you have any other ideas, feel free to send them over too. The progress will continue to be slow (but steady) as I have a FT job, own/operate a charter boat on the Chesapeake and have a family of 3 so you?ll understand when I say ?that the boat will get done sometime? but I?m hoping for a completion in July/August for a ?bare-bones? vessel. I?ll use her in Sept through January for tuna, seabass and tile and then bring her back on the hard in January for the final touches (the finish work always takes a long time).
I know taht I have glassed over some of the steps of this project rather quickly here but I think taht I have touched upon all of the salient points.
Here are some time-line pictures of the project from the beginning
This post edited by GoodChance 10:56 PM 11/05/2009
The boat came with a cat 3208t and a TD 507 transmission and each had about 9200hrs but reportly ran "great" before the fire. The engine was cosmetically in very poor condition. All of the wires were toast. Any aluminium or plastic on the engine was also toast. Plus the fuel pump was toast. But at least I had the engine, transmission, shaft and wheel. The engine and transmissioon were removed and rebuilt.
Like I said already, I purchased the boat in October 2007 under great protest from my father who looked at the boat and said "you gotta be F'ing nuts to buy that piece of charcoal" and my wife saw it pull up the driveway and walked back inside without saying a word.....the silence was very loud. The boat was delivered 10/17/2007 and work began right away. Within the first week, the I removed all of the debris from the boat filling at least 15 industrial sized trash bags - removed were parts of a liferaft, old fishing tackle, USCG safety gear, a Wagner helm, compass, electronics, clothing, food, ropes, etc, etc. More stuff than I care to remember. On the 2nd week, I had removed the cabins and all of the washboards. Next came up the sole. Since I had come so far already, I decided to replace all of the deck beams even though they didn't appear that old and were in fine shape. Then the messy part started .... cutting out the delaminated portions of fiberglass. The Duffy appeared to have about 8 layers throughout the hull above the WL. In the forepeak, I had to remove just 1 or 2 layers until I got to solid glass. In the main cabin, I had to remove about 4 layers and the same for the ****pit. I just kept on removing layers until I was 100% certain that I had gotten down to solid glass taht had no heat distortion or no ill-effects from cracking or drying.
After getting down to clean glass, I started rebuilding. For construction, I bought a roll (110 linear yds) of 1708 biaxial and, 70 gallons of RAKA epoxy (great stuff BTW, easy to apply, great wetting properties, little tendency to blush and about 1/2 the cost of West). I replaced proportional numbers of layers as were removed but I believe that the hull in now probably stronger than original given the strength properties of epoxy. Some may ask "why didn't you use polyester since the boat is made of poly". Well, newly laid poly won't bond to old-cured poly with any degree of reliability plus I was certain, that despite my best efforts, that there was still some dirt/smoke in the fiberglass hull. Epoxy would be less sensitive to this dirt compared to poly.
Also, right after removing the sole, I also removed the 3208 and had it MOH'ed by our local Cat shop. About 5 weeks later, they had the engine running like NEW, rebuilt the transmission, and replaced the fuel pump plus a few other parts that were fire affected. They gave me a 1 year warranty on the MOH so I'm pretty happy with that.
Anyway, concurrent to the MOH, and after rebuilding the hull, I replaced the deck beams, installed a new wet exhaust (the old boat had a dry) installed a new fir plywood sole (installed with 5200 and #12x2" SS screws) and fiberglassed the new deck to the hull with biaxial/RAKA.
Next was to build the truck cabin which took about 3 weeks of part-time work but was eventually completed. I didn't want any roof beams (carlings) inside the cabin so I made a 10x12ft jig with a 4.5" over 10ft camber and bent 2 layers of 1/2" A/A grade fir plywood over the jig with a bond of epoxy between each layer. This layer of epoxy allowed the two layers of plywood to hold the original camber after removed from the jig. Plywood was a fine construction material for the small truck cabin (strong, impact resistant) but too heavy for the roof of the main cabin. For this, I used the same jig but used 2" nidacore as a base material with 2 layers of biaxial on the topside and 1 layer on the inside. After the 3rd layer, I removed from the jig and the entire roof (10x12ft) weighted about 250lbs plus the roof was as stiff as steel "I" beam. A great choice for a large cabin roof.
After constructing the 2 cabin bulkheads and putting into place, I recruited the help of friends and we lifted the 2 roofs into place. Both were secured with 1708 tabs on the inside and out.
And this is about where I am current located. I started building the windshield last Monday and have only completed the center 2 windows and each of these frames are also tabbed into place. Hopefully this week I will complete the other 2 windows and also install.
I'll try to be more reliable in posting frequent threads updating on progress. It'll be good to look back on all of this at the projects completion and see how it all went. Thus far, I have about 7 months of time invested working just on weekends and after work as time allows. Fortunately I have an understanding and patient wife who puts up with all of this nonsense.
Many of you have helped me tremendously with your ideas, suggestions and for this help I am greatly appreciative. If you have any other ideas, feel free to send them over too. The progress will continue to be slow (but steady) as I have a FT job, own/operate a charter boat on the Chesapeake and have a family of 3 so you?ll understand when I say ?that the boat will get done sometime? but I?m hoping for a completion in July/August for a ?bare-bones? vessel. I?ll use her in Sept through January for tuna, seabass and tile and then bring her back on the hard in January for the final touches (the finish work always takes a long time).
I know taht I have glassed over some of the steps of this project rather quickly here but I think taht I have touched upon all of the salient points.
Here are some time-line pictures of the project from the beginning
This post edited by GoodChance 10:56 PM 11/05/2009
