Fine Weather and Paint Removal

For once this summer, the weather has been great. Perfect for stripping Z28. Using heat gun and various scrapers, we have had a succesful weekend stripping her of paint.

We have now removed exterior paint to the waterline on both sides of the hull, revealing the planks. Generally speaking, things are not in too bad a condition. Certainly some of the copper fastenings are failing and these can be easily recognised through the 'pure pink' colour of some of the fastenings. The planks aren't too bad generally speaking. There is some very light softning of the wood around the bottoms of the waterline plank. However, this is to be expected as this is the area that takes the pounding from the water, knocks as well as the the damaging impact of UV.

The stemhead is going to need some work and old, damaged / rotten wood will need to be removed and new wood laminated in.

The keel on the boat has been epoxy coated in the past. On close inspection this epoxy coating looks somewhat deformed and has cracked. So yesterday evening, concluding that the epoxy will need re-doing, I began to bring the epoxy off the hull.

Everything was very wet around the keel step area. I am glad that I have found this earlier on. What remains to be seen is whether or not the wood is still sound. Presently, it is very wet and can be easily penetrated. It is a case of wait and see while it dries out a little. Thank god for the good weather at the moment!

I've also started looking at the leak at the bow and feel fairly confident that an easy repair in this area can be affected. I'll post some pictures of this.

Scraping back test areas on some of the planks below the waterline and most seem to be in fairly good condition which is good news. The bad news is that the hard bit comes now. Removing the anti-fouling. This is a fairly time consuming process but the good news is that once it is done, the exterior will be stripped.

Brendan has started stripping the interior and as might be expected, the paint does come off in here somewhat more easily than the exterior.