carvel hull querie

[hwkeene]

My deb 33 has an unusual construction of carvel mahogany on laminated iroco but with strips of wood between each plank horizontaly. As we are going to have to make some repairs to the hull I would be pleased to hear of any pitfalls to watch out for.

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[Peterduck]

The strips of wood [usually a soft wood] are called splines, and are usually a repair of troublesome, frequently over-caulked, seams. I don't know of nay particular pitfalls associated with them.

Peter.

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[hwkeene]

these splines were fitted at construction and are in every horizontal seam and seem to be in excellent condition with no apparent gaps. the hull is very smooth to the touch and apart from a few soft spots at the transome end will not require a lot of work to fix.

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[Mirelle]

Splined seam construction; a high spec. method, usually done if the first owner wanted varnished topsides. Sometimes done to get a more perfect paint surface.

Do not disturb the splines if you can help it; making new ones calls for the sort of craftsmanship that is in fairly short supply now.

The splines just take the place of the putty used in conventional caulking; underneath the splines you will find, if you ignore my advice and dig one out, conventional caulking cotton, made and driven with mallet and iron in the normal way.

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[roly_voya]

Great boat and I belive quite a few where splined and varnished, certainly new of one in Morcomb bay done like this and it looked good though the owner did seam to spend a lot of time with avarnish brush! You don't say what repairs you are doing but I would second the advice not to disturb the planking unless unavoidable, which means unless replacing sections of it. If you are doing this preserve you plank edges at all costs as the spines need a perfect fit to work the can't accomodate wobbly seams like putty. If you are giong to have to replace lengths of spline they can be cut using a very good table saw and fine toothed tungston blades but like someone else said you need a crafstman on the end of the saw and they seem rare these days! The big problem is that they don't allow as much movement as putty and you tend to get cracking along the edge. Not had a problem with this letting in water but it does spoil the finish and the only solution I found was not to let the boat dry out.

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[hwkeene]

The boat has been out of the water for 4 years and is only wet by the weather so some of the seams above the antifoul are a bit wider than normal. We are plannning to take all the paint and all the antifoul off, would anyone reccomend epoxy below the waterline on wood, or above it? The first job is to seal the deck so I have to learn pretty fast how to recaulk teak decking. there must be special tools for the job aren't there. This was a plug hull for an original mould to be cast from so the finish is top class and as such will be well worth restoring over the next couple of years. All the fittings and the keel are phos: bronze and the deck & coachouse are in teak, so I will be soon an expert on varnishing as well. any help much appreciated.
regards, harry

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[Mirelle]

epoxy, decks, etc.

1. Don't think about epoxy coating a conventionally built hull, anywhere. It will end in tears if you try it.

2. If your teak decks are leaking, fix them first. But establish if they are honest teak decks or teak strips on a plywood subdeck; if the latter you may have major problems and the subject is beyond my scope.

I recommend early perusal of http://www.woodenboat.com

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