Redemption?

Progress is coming along nicely on the transom repair.

It looks like everything's going to be fine, but we won't know for sure until the boat is in the water. In the meantime, let me catch you up on the progress.

Here's where we left off:

I had cut a 1-1/4" diameter x 2" long plug of mahogany with a hole saw, filled the pilot hole with thickened epoxy, coated everything (heavily) with thickened epoxy, and tapped it into place with a hammer. 

Ugly. But solid.

The next day, I very carefully re-cut the starboard hole to where I wanted it to be.

Starboard hole re-drilled & sanded.

This put the top of the opening where I wanted it to be, but it also now created a gap at the bottom, as you can see in these next photos.

At first, I planned to simply fill this in with a lot of thickened epoxy. That probably would have worked fine, but another thought occurred to me.

The big 2" chunk of mahogany I'd cut the plug from was still sitting on my drill press, underneath the 1-1/4" hole saw. I realized that, if I aligned the hole saw slightly off-center from the hole, I could cut a 2" long crescent-shaped shim.

I then coated the shim in thickened epoxy, and pressed it into place.

This, of course, left another ugly mess once the epoxy had cured. So, I ran the hole saw back through the hole to clean up the inner diameter. Then, I spent some time sanding, filing, and chiseling away the excess in order to create a nice, flat surface for the drain tubes to mate to.

I regrettably don't have any "before" pictures of the drain tubes. I'll try to describe this part succinctly:

I used Moeller 1 x 3 tubes that I bought from Jamestown Distributors. These are made from thicker, heavier brass than the Seachoice tubes you might find at Academy Sports or Walmart. The Moeller tubes aren't as "pretty" (meaning shiny and polished), but they're definitely stronger.

The tubes come flared at one end. I placed the tubes in the holes, and marked approximately 1/8"  extended past the transom. To do this, I simply held a fine-tip sharpie flat against the transom, with the tip on the brass tube — and rotated the tube to create the mark.

I cut the tube off at this mark with a pipe & tubing cutter.

The installation

I mixed a batch of epoxy, and using double layers of latex gloves, I coated the inner diameter of each hole and all other exposed-wood surfaces in order to water-seal it.

Then, I added mahogany wood dust to the remaining epoxy and thickened it heavily. With this mixture, I coated everything — and I mean EVERYTHING — the inner diameter of the holes, the outer surface of the tubes, and any / every mis-cut that needed to be filled.

Then I inserted the tubes from the outside in, using a twisting motion to make sure as much epoxy as possible remained between the tube and the wood.

To flare the tubes, I used a flaring tool that I'd gotten from another boatbuilder (who actually launched his boat for the first time yesterday — congratulations!). I believe the flaring tool was a Seachoice or SeaSense brand. Plenty of boatbuilders say you don't really need one of these tools. I haven't tried their described methods, but they apparently do work. For my part, I was glad to have the flaring tool.

In the process, I got epoxy all over everything. I made a helluva mess, and it took forever to clean it up. But, in the end, I was left with this:

Starboard drain tube

Port drain tube

Obviously, this mess needs to be painted now. Stay tuned, and God Bless!