Caulking a carvel hull

[JACKSPRATT]

Hi to all and seasons greetings - I have recently changed from fibreglass to a pitch pine on oak framed 1939 Hilyard 12 ton. I am looking for someone who can reccomend a good manual to tell me how to tackle the job of raking out the cracked stopping and checking the caulking before applying new stopping and painting. I have stripped of all the old coatings and the planking seems to be in good condition.

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[Mirelle]

Michael Verney's books cover it - they stood me in good stead when I first tackled the job. There is a trick way of getting the stopping out without shifting the cotton or damaging the seam edges - a special tool with a rectangular bit of steel say 1" x 3/4" x seam width, welded onto a handle. Insert in seam and tap gently away from you with hammer and the stopping falls out!. If the cotton looks like cotton, harden it up, paint it with primer and re-stop with red lead putty below w/l, white lead above. If it looks like potting compost have it out and start again.

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[Guest]

Welcome to the world of wooden boats and particular the excellent and seaworthy Hillyards.

I agree with Mirelle but would suggest you carry out this work with caution so as not to damage the seams. It is easy to get frustrated with the tedious job and sometimes one can maybe get a little heavy handed when raking out seams and a damaged seam can at best look unsightly and at worst needs repairing. Also, for what its worth: don't be too enthusiastic about raking out each and every seam. In my experience, having gone through this with two boats, if the stopping won't come out easily then it is probably still good and leave it well alone and concentrate on the patches where the stopping is loose and crumbly.

I realise I am not very eloquent and may have confused you even more but what I mean is if it ain't broke don't fix it!

If you need to rake out the cotton I have found that a hacksaw blade with a hook filed on one end very useful.

Good luck and if you want to talk to other Hillyarders look at their website www.hillyardyachts.com for contacts.

Best wishes,
Vincent

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[Gordonmc]

This sounds very much like the job I did on my Hillyard 8 tonner last winter. Almost all of the seams had opened up above the waterline with the St'bd side worse.
I put this down to heat build up as the topsides were dark green. The good news was that the cotton was fine... I just needed to get enough stopping out to give a sound bed for new stuff. I used white lead paste after giving the hull a coat of primer, then for the cosmetic work used Interfill which dries quickly and sands well. In all I put four coats of undercoat on, filling and fairing before each coat. Then two coats of single pot Blakes topside gloss.

White lead paste is available from some old style chandlers or from Classic Marine mail-order. Use red lead paste for below the waterline.

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[petercrook]

You can buy ready-mixed red lead putty from Traditional Boat Supplies. It's cheaper than white lead and you can now use it above the waterline as well: modern paints don't let the red colour bleed through which was why white lead used to be used for the topsides.

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[stephenh]

Tools for raking out old stopping :-

Buy cheap old used files from markets etc. - they are made of good quality steel.

Heat the tang / file join and bend the tang to 90 degrees. It won't bend without heating... almost to cherry red.

Cover the file part with tape, grind down the tang (keep square section) until you have the right size.


You will need about three different sizes.
You can hit with hammer for hard bits or just use by hand.

good luck

Stephen

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[Richard_Blake]

This contribution is probably too late, and you're all done and painted, but we have recently done the same job, using Mirelle's special tool which is very effective. Another tip which helped greatly (can't remember where I read/heard it... Brickhill article maybe?) is to pre-loosen the stopping by tapping it gently inwards, separating it from the plank edge slightly with less later risk of splitting. This assumes you've stripped the paint off enough to accurately see the stopping/planking join. I used a cold chisel, ground off square to just narrower than the seam width (in fact I slightly hollowed it like a caulking iron). Position it just on the putty and tap inwards (heavy hammer, light blow) to crack putty away from wood. Then work Mirelle's tool along the seam. Worked a treat!

Richard

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