Restore the floor
I have started on this now. The floor is now framed and ready for the expanding foam to be put in. I decided to put in more supports than the original since this will be the high traffic area of the boat.
In this picture you can see how I bent the supports. A few landscaping bricks did the trick until the resin dries.
Once that was dry, I poured some polyeuthane foam into the hull. This stuff was amazing. A tiny bit would expand to fill a huge volume. I'll do some calculations later but it really depends on how warm it is and how deep you pour it.
One thing to be aware of... it will go everywhere it can. Unfortunately some of it went under the part of the deck that I did not remove and caused it to bow up. That was a lot of work to get it out!
I was told that you could just cut off the excess when you were done. Don't believe anyone if they tell you that. Sure.. it can be cut off but you will spend the rest of your life doing it. A very slow and tedious process.
What I found worked amazingly well was a belt sander. I had it level with the cross members in no time!
Once I had it sanded down level with the wood, I epoxied the wood and squished the plywood down onto it. I then weighed down the plywood with landscaping bricks since it is tough if not impossible to clamp the floor.
Back to the Flying Dutchman Restoration Project page