This is a barbed needle that allows you to take biological samples by poking the victim. The wood is good, although the fact that it is discolored shows that moisture was present.

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.

This is a barbed needle that allows you to take biological samples by poking the victim. The wood is good, although the fact that it is discolored shows that moisture was present.

Some of the screws had corroded and that colored the swarf. Spooked me, so I got out my creepy medical tools.

On the original setup, the fuel filter was between the tanks and screwed to the deck. It's now hung temporarily from an outboard bolt (above the bilge pump) and exploratory holes have been drilled to find out the condition of the balsa core where it has been breached to install hold-downs for the various gear.

M

This is a barbed needle that allows you to take biological samples by poking the victim. The wood is good, although the fact that it is discolored shows that moisture was present.

Marco Flamingo
Sep 2, 2015

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