Day 159, 7/13/24 Chain locker rebuild part 2, Pumping out, fuel tank part 1- cleaning and measuring .

 Chain locker part 2

Mold model dry fit again. 

to be clear - i plan to use plywood box as mold, not as core. Using "internal" mold will let me to avoid glassing box from inside and male nice . 

10mm shims on sides represent future fiberglass. box inserted and fits well. Interface plates on front and back added "on-place" to set mold in on position.

Close views

Rubber pads added for the time of dry fit to make distance shims to "reserve" space for Fiberglass what will coat plywood mold.

Continue work on it. 

I cut excessive plywood "ears" and put thickened epoxy fillets from inside and then routed and sanded all corners to round shape.

Box covered with 2 layers of liquid epoxy and all corners patched using epoxy with fairing filler.

Waits to be sanded, recovered to be glossy smooth and then used for box build up.

2 days later. Ready for laminating

 

Fuel tank Part1

Pumped out all fuel from the integrated fuel tank. Found about 11 gallons of looks like clean fuel. pump then

Previous owner did some strange caulking job on the fuel tank. I did not touch it, and i did not try to fill it full to avoid to check if it tight or not.

Taking caulking out It is clear what sealed lid is not good for this purpose. some areas sealant  did not stick to surface at all.

All sealant removed. oscillating tool with "knife" blade works absolutely great.

When I bought the boat previous owner proudly said he used "aviation" sealant and it is 100% guaranteed it will keep fuel from any leak.

 

Special paragraph about screws keeping lid in place. All af them was #10 seltapping screws and only 1/3 of them really bite in something, all others just turn freely.

So what I see when I opened the tank?

Sticky, Tar looking substance everywhere. it never set neither to hard or  elastic form, it stayed at least 3 yeas there, likely much longer ind did not seal anything.  Fuel ran easy out on joint, that is why they poop all this polyurethane sealant.

3 hours in gas mask at about 100 F temperature and  half gallon of Acetone (anything else did not help to clean this tar like stuff). 

I hate acetone due to fire/explosion  haphazardness. I was not able to have air conditioning due to need to make blowing ventilation to avoid high concentrations of   acetone vapors. 

But result is pretty impressive.

Close view to in fill, breather and pickup tube.

BTW. Pickup tube has no strainer, looks like it was there some time ago but not any more. Pickup tube is just cooper pipe with soldered on washer or so.