Exploratory drilling showed stained but essentially good wood near the helm seat box pop rivets. I'm amazed, given what I found on the other side and the fact that these two rivet heads had fallen off.

When actually leaking enough to cause rot, they look more like this.

These rivets all have rusty mandrels, indicating high levels of moisture in the core even areas where the rivets didn't appear to have leaked and the wood appears okay.

Even the rivets that looked good simply fell apart when bumped or drilled. These are aluminum rivets with a steel mandrel. Not a problem if they never get wet. Oh that's right, it's a boat!

Exploratory drilling showed stained but essentially good wood near the helm seat box pop rivets. I'm amazed, given what I found on the other side and the fact that these two rivet heads had fallen off.

Here are the holes that concerned me next. The seat box/cockpit liners are fastened to the deck with blind rivets. Do these go into the balsa core? Yikes! The rivet heads have popped off and the caulking has failed. Not a good sign if these go into the balsa core.

Finally, the area can be cleaned up and repainted. You can see that the four corners of the battery tray were also just screwed into the balsa core. The goal was to fix the damage, relocate everything, and have a clean deck. This was before I realized that the cockpit panel (on the right) was simply pop riveted into the balsa core. My little project of protecting the balsa core just turned big.

I removed all the junk. The holes were then coated with penetrating epoxy, left for 24 hours, then filled with an epoxy putty made from wood dust, then painted again with penetrating epoxy. The bilge pump base was screwed and glued in place. I tore it out, which ruined the base ($8) and will just glue it back in place to eliminate any penetration into the balsa core.

M

Exploratory drilling showed stained but essentially good wood near the helm seat box pop rivets. I'm amazed, given what I found on the other side and the fact that these two rivet heads had fallen off.

Marco Flamingo
Oct 2, 2015

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