Thursday, May 22, 2008

The Deck, Ah Yes The Deck


The decks on a Cheoy Lee are covered with 9mm thick teak. The deck is constructed with a inner fiberglass layer, a core of some material (usually a wood of some sort), an outer fiberglass layer, adhesive, teak plank and then caulking. Once the fiberglass sandwich is made, Cheoy Lee then drills and threads thousands of holes through the outer layer and into the core layer. The teak planks are then screwed into place with a 3/4 inch bronze screw. The screw top is then covered with a 3mm bung.
As you can well image, the bungs wear off and fall out, the planks leak after working, the caulk turns stiff and brittle, and those thousands of holes in the deck create an expressway for water to get to the core material. Once that core gets wet for awhile and the freezes, thaws, freezes, thaws, etc, the layers of fiberglass will delaminate from the core material. The speed at which that happens depends on the type of core material, the quality of construction and the amount of water that enters the core.
There are two solutions to this problem: ignore it or fix it. I chose fix it.
This is the heart of the restoration project. It might take several posts.

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