Douglas Fir plywood cracks

Here it is a couple of days past Christmas '10 and I am back at it again.  In the starboard berth area, I am stripping the old paint down to wood in order to permanently seal the Douglas Fir that invariably opens with time.  This plywood is notorious for developing "checks" in the grain with expansion and contraction from temperature changes.  The only way I know to eliminate it is to cover it with some fiberglass cloth and epoxy resin.  Resin alone just won't do it.  It needs the rebar effect of cloth to hold it together.

I have tried all the common means of removing the old paint: sanding, stripping, heat gunning.  The easiest seems to be to strip it, then heat gun it off, with a final light sanding prior to applying the cloth and resin.  But, the reality is, even that is not easy: fumes of the stripper, scraping of the loosened paint, square-inch-by-square-inch removal of the remaining paint with the heat gun.  At least it is cool weather now, otherwise the heat build-up in the berth area would be intolerable.

During the rainy period that broke lots of records here in SoCal, along with birthday celebrations, Christmas day family dinner and gift opening, plus a few other interruptions, I was able to cut out 316L stainless steel parts for the rudder.  Now some of them need to go to a welder and machine shop for final fabrication.  The new rudder has a layer of 17 oz. biaxial cloth on the leading edge.  It needs a weave-filling coat of epoxy and more fairing.  It will be strong and totally encapsulated in epoxy.  The problem with the old one was just the opposite. It was made with no cloth and eventually the bare resin coat opened enough to let salt water in along with shipworms.  If you looks at the picasaweb pictures I have posted, you can see the damage the worms did.  My biggest concern now is the skeg which probably will need the same treatment as the new rudder (IF I am lucky and don't have to replace it too!).  The major problem with the skeg is being underwater and there is no easy way to get to it for a detailed inspection without a haul-out or lifting the stern until it clears the water.

But, as I tell myself, each project, one at a time, until they all are dealt with.  Actually it is usually about three or four at a time that are in progress.

Soon I will be removing the headstay chainplate to replace it with one of 316L 3/16" stainless steel.  When it is in place, I can then finish the plastic surgery nose job on poor ETAK.  She looks terrible with that sawed-off nose!