"17-Year Celtic Knot Table Project Involving 2 Generations. Dedicated To My Wife Susan Who Died Of Cancer And Never Got To Meet Her 30 Grandchildren. Western Red Cedar. Arm-R-Seal Satin. Base Pedestal Made Of Reclaimed Timber From A Western Sizzler Fire"
I have a similar project like #2: I'm just restoring a 75 year old Swedish wooden boat.
I'd appreciate some ideas to get this ol' lady permanently waterproof - it's a pain to soak it every spring for 3 weeks to close the leaks.
Tnx in advance,
If you are not opposed to mixing modern and old-school then a shell of some kind of synthetic fiber soaked in epoxy might be a semi permanent solution.
Thank you!
I thought about the fiber and epoxy solution too, thank you, for confirming me!
- First a very thin fiber from outside, fixied with clear epoxy , so the wood structure and colours are still visible.
- the 2nd part might be the most difficult part: I want to kill the wood (that's still working after all these years) by soaking it with epoxy.
That means, I have to roll this boat (luckily only 6m and 450 kg) step by step so a layer of epoxy is always on the ground.
The next part is easy: I will stabilize all the wooden junctions with a selfmade "pasta" of fine wood grains and epoxy.
My only fear is, that the epoxy is so heavy, that the boat doesn' lift itself out of the water. But better a slow boat without any leaks but a fast Titanic II
Thank you again!
If you google "pask makes kayak". You will see an example of this, not on old wood tho, so apply your own judgement.
For epoxy to work proper one has to encase the wood in epoxy from all sides otherwise the moisture will enter the wood and if it is on one side and not on the other swell the wood, potentially damaging the substrate around the adhesion layer of the two materials.
Yes the boat will be heavier, but you do not need a thick layer on the inside, just thick enough to not be worn through by "normal use", fiber net will help too, "stabilized" wood you might get if you manage to get any of it to soak into the wood might just not care about water, have not tried myself, would not know.
Any layers outside will make the boat larger thus increasing the displaced water volume increasing the lift force through Archimedes' principle. As relative density of epoxy is around 1.1 only 10-ish% of the weight of the epoxy under the waterline will count as reduction in cargo capacity. Fiber net density not taken into account.
Wholesome comments! thanks! the comment-section really needs more of that.
Thank you again!
It was a good idea to bookmark this page and to come back the next day.
May this coming summer be a rainy nightmare (only in my area, the border region between Danmark and Germany) , so I have a lot of excuses to visit the ol' lady in her garage.
... Let's get her wet from underneath again
#26 Simple and incredible on so many levels...literally and figuratively because the design never occurred to me before. It's so abstract, yet the game is still played traditionally. I'm a highly proficient chess player, and this would be a welcome challenge due to the distracting design.