1982 AMF Sunfish PHOENIX 02 Jan 21 Fiberglass Backer Plates

02 Jan 21: 

Trimmed a piece of chine off of the parts boat SALLY to be used as an internal fiberglass repair backer plate.

The plate will be adhered inside the hull, behind this section of chine.

Dry fit of all of the backer plates for the chine, hull flange and deck.

Poor PHOENIX, I called her WAVE twice in the video. I guess my mind was on WAVE, who just got her second coat of paint. I hope she forgives me.

Log of PHOENIX.

1980 AMF Sunfish Viper 03 Oct 17 Gudgeon and Backer Blocks

03 Oct 17:

The work dolly has worked out great. The bunks articulate to support the boat in a lot of different orientations!

Flushed out a pound of dirt.

Checked out the gudgeon backer plate, it is threaded for #8-32 screws and fiberglassed into the hull.

Upgraded the dolly wheels to solid rubber, 6 inch swivels. We can roll the dolly with ease from the carriage house to the backyard Sunfish Shack now.

Replaced the bow handle backer block with cypress. Sealed it with TotalBoat High Performance epoxy and bedded it in THIXO. Rpelaced the halyard block backer and cleat backer as well.

Built up the bow flange with one layer of woven roving then 3 layers of 4 oz cloth, saturated with epoxy.

Epoxy backer patch for the hull, 6 oz fiberglass cloth held in place by a piece of cardboard tied snug with strings.

Log of Viper.

Stripes and hardware

Installed the coaming, it screwed back in pretty easy. I was able to press 4 seized up screws with rivnuts back into original holes and seal with epoxy

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Gudgeon, backer plate and hardware

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Gudgeon installed, with a bit of silicone around the screw holes

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Both wooden backer blocks for the eyestraps had fallen off. I had to dig through some foam on each side to find them, luckily they had not gone too far. I put some silicone on them, flipped them around, held them in place while Jack drilled a pilot hole. Then we dropped in a screw, put on the bridle and put in remaining screw. That was a satisfying sound to hear them snug up to the deck when we tightened them

From Sunfish Sailboat

Jack puts in the inspection port for the first time. We had to take it back out in order to have more room when the backer block issue arose. Plus the hardware was goofed up, I had some stop nuts that were the wrong size. I grabbed them from the bin at the hardware store without checking ALL of them. I normally do, but I was rushed because I was last customer in store. Also remember to pick up a few extra, in case something gets lost in hull

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Her is the rig we plan to use. Sail, mast and spars came from Craigslist, the sail matches new color

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Put another coat of paint on the stripes today then pulled off the tape. Also installed bow handle, halyard block and halyard cleat

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This Sunfish is ready to go!

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New bridle and inspection port, reinstalled with new hardware

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Aft deck stripes and cockpit. We left the vintage AMF Alcort sticker

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Fiberglass Deck Repair

Rosebud had a hole punched in the deck from resting upside down on a roller. I wanted to experiment with repairing the damaged area with a backer plate:

From Sunfish Sailboat

I laid wax paper over the damaged area to trace the crack:

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Next I taped the wax paper on a good deck so I could get the proper profile for the new patch:

From Sunfish Sailboat

I laid up 3 layers of fiberglass and cut a hole in the middle to allow space for the backer block under the deck. As it turns out this hole needed to be bigger, and that allowed access into the hull while I was working on the first phase:

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Mixed up epoxy and hardener and troweled it into the fiberglass:

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Once it dried I trimmed the edges and had this backer plate:

From Sunfish Sailboat

The next step is to mark spots on the patch to attach the strings or wire that will be used to pull the patch snug inside the hull while it dries, or while you put in screws to draw it tight. This is an example of the strings from another patch I did. For this deck repair the strings must line up with the crack so you can pull the backer plate tight:

From Sunfish Sailboat

Lots of things going on in this photo, ran out of hands for the camera. The deck has been sanded and broken fiberglass sanded away. The crack has been faired in anticipation of future epoxy repair. The inside of the deck was also sanded and epoxy was brushed on outer perimeter of the cracked area, because I want to epoxy the backer plate into position without glueing down the middle flap down. Why? because I am going to use sticks inside the hull to push the deck back into position while the backer plate dries, then remove the sticks and seal the rest of the flap. Epoxy was added to the top of the backer plate, but only to the outer perimeter, With the assistance of a helper I slid the backer plate into the hull while the helper maneuvered the strings into the right position. Before we did this, I numbered the strings with tape and marked the corresponding string position on the deck so we would know how to sort them out. Once backer plate was in I used two sticks to push up deck into proper profile. Then I added screws around the outside perimeter and let epoxy dry:

From Sunfish Sailboat

From Sunfish Sailboat

Once epoxy dried I removed sticks from inside then epoxied and screwed the flap:

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I added filler to the epoxy and left to dry:

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Removed the screws, sanded and added first layer of marine tex epoxy putty. This picture is after sanding the first layer of marine tex. if the gel coat was not 40 years old, we could gel coat and sand. The rest of the gel coat has issues though, so the deck will be painted:

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After paint.

From Small Boat Restoration

Back in the water.

From Small Boat Restoration