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In the worst of cases the boat comes apart and the bad pieces are used as patterns for cutting new wood. Joe B Hey Joe, I have to respectfully disagree. I think mine was an even worse case than that. The boat came apart, and the bad pieces were nearly useless as patterns for new wood! That's largel...

Nice work Bill, and I really like the fact that you can make two frames at once. A few questions for you: How are you capturing the shape of the frame? Is your boat upside down with planks off? Is it upright and you are taking the shape off the interiror? Are you steaming the thin layers of wood, o...

DO NOT sand or sandblast the old paint on these boats. It's lead-based paint and it's a serious neurotoxin that takes only tiny amounts to start doing damage, especially to children age 6 & under and to the unborn. As a remodeling contractor, the EPA has just gotten serious with us about raising...

Not knowing anything else about your project and - admittedly - answering a bit blind... I'd say FLIP if you have to work on ribs & keel. My $0.02 worth; YMMV.

Thanks for the nice comments... those are some incredible frames! What's that from? I also didn't notice at first that they're loaded on the back of a truck! I only want to do this once (actually, I didn't even want to do it once! :roll: ), and I've read enough anecdotal evidence that some epoxies d...

Hello all! It's been a long time since I posted anything related to my boat. I won't go into everything that's happened personally or on the project right now, but suffice to say that I'm back on task and making good progress. In short, I've completely given up on steam bending my new frames. I've g...

From what I recall, I think you're supposed to have a NIOSH 100 mask/respirator for particulates. Once you use heat, you need a respirator with chemical cartridges to stop the lead fumes. Dust filters won't do it.

Glad to know you're taking precautions!

This is my first time on this forum in a while, so I hope I'm not beating an already-dead horse here.... I'm working on a 1957 Sea Lancer, and when I began removing the paint from my hull, I started by sanding. It then occurred to me that I might be dealing with lead paint, given the age of the boat...

Peter, You're going to be doing a major restoration "before long" anyway, right? Will that include stripping the hull and repainting? (Remember, it's probably lead-based paint if it's original, like mine was....) If that's the case, I'd go with a good-quality exterior oil from any source y...

Phill - That sounds like a good idea, because the cracking always occurs on the outside face, not on the inside. One material that comes to mind is pallet strap bands. Being in construction, I come across these all the time. The next thing that occurred to me is that a lot of lumber nowadays is bund...

Peter - Yeah, that one day thing rings a bell. I guess I'll be making a few more bending frames if I can only do one boat frame per day! On that last photo with the over-bend, I decided to bring it inside the house to cool & to dry so that I could see if that helped any. It may have, but what al...

Thanks, Peter! Funny - I guess I've leapfrogged you on the bottom work, huh? When I first bought this thing in January, I think you were anticipating doing much the same to yours in this same timeframe. I'm jealous, though - you've had yours on the water, whereas the last time I stood in this boat w...

While I've been doing all this bottom & keelson work, I've been busy as well getting ready to replace all those frames. I had posted earlier about having built my steambox and testing it on some kiln-dried maple scraps. All my oak to this point was also kiln-dried, so I milled some pieces to fra...

Here's a quick diagram of what I'm talking about with the gap and the keelson taper:

Thanks everyone who's weighed in already on my keelson and frame replacement questions. After a little work Sunday and last night, I'm finally at the point of putting some new wood into this boat. Whereas I originally could tell that I might need to replace six frames (or possibly more), now it's cl...