Bulkhead Repair

[Windancer808]

Hello fellow CAL owners,

I live in Honolulu and acquired a 1970 CAL 2-30 in April of 2021. Been working on upgrading and improving her since. Completely redone the top deck, getting rid of 50 years of crazed gelcoat, new Awlgrip top coat and a great non-slip paint procured from Home Depot, believe it or not. Wanted to go with Kiwi Grip, but WM was out and I was in a bind. In November of last year, after another hefty repair bill for the Diesel, I finally had enough and removed the old Yanmar 1-Cylinder diesel. Planning on hauling out again in August to fix the strut, and install an 12-15KW electric motor. Just came back to Ala Wai boat harbor, after a 14 day haul-out to completely strip the bottom down to the glass, fix a gazillion blisters and 50 years of bad repair jobs with 3 coats of Pettit Protect 2000 Epoxy and a hard Pettit Trinidad AF paint. Now working on the inside, we fixed a few wet spots in the bulkheads and removed the Balsa core in the side decks to make her watertight again.

My question to the forum is, how to improve the looks of the bulkheads, which have suffered under the construction work and previous water intrusion. Has anyone attempted to put a new layer of laminate on these? This would not be a job I could undertake myself, not good at wood work. I am looking for ideas and options, including covering the bulkheads with floor tiles/strips and heavy adhesive to keep them in place. That option , however, would require some sort of molding to keep it looking decent, since most of the stuff I saw at Home Depot is at least 3/8" to 1/4" thick. Any help and/or ideas would be greatly welcome. I have done extensive fiberglass work and used a lot of 1/4 and 3/4 inch Koosa board to replace rotten balsa wood areas. I'd be happy to give advice , if needed.

Aloha,
Joe

P.S. I still have tons of parts and spares for the Yanmar YSM 12, including alternator, transmission, trans-cover, lots of filters and other small stuff. If you can use any parts text me at 808.386.5958.

[Mary Mac]

Hi Joe,

I replaced part of one of my bulkheads and have wondered what to do to finish it as well. You can buy a veneer. I wouldn’t use adhesive and tiles because you may be inviting moisture to get trapped behind it and that could further damage the bulkhead wood.

I have thought about painting mine. I know it’s not ideal because it looks like you’re covering something up, but a quality paint job would look nice.

I had an Ericson that had 2” wide vertical wood paneling strips over the bulkheads. It looked nice.

[rcvesselstyn]

Hi Joe. Welcome! I'm assuming that you have mahogany plywood bulkheads. That is what we had in the Cal-25 and the Cal-28. We went the more traditional route of taking off the varnish and then using oxalic acid to remove the stains, sanding, restaining with a darker stain and revarnishing. It's lots of work but the end result is close to the original bulkhead appearance. There have been some big improvements to our techniques since those days. Now for stripping off the old varnish instead of sanding we use an eco strip Cobra,, which is an infrared paint stripper, and scrape off the old varnish and then do a light sanding. We still use oxalic acid on the dark stains. Now we use semco teak sealer, and rub it on by hand. It floats the old stains out of the wood very effectively and adds density to the dried out wood. It takes multiple coats but it looks great when finished. You can even hand buff the surface to a low shine. If the wood is really awful as long as it's structurally sound the other option would be going with veneer. If you take your time it's almost impossible to tell it from the original. As far as the edges, you can go the route that Cal used on later boats that had teak. And add wood trim above the panels to the overhead.

20210127_162023.jpg (3.94 MiB) Viewed 4108 times

[Windancer808]

Thank you so much for the tips on refinishing the bulkheads. Unfortunately, I had moisture penetrate the area around the mast and we had to use a fair amount of epoxy filler to replace the rotten wood. This resulted in unsightly blemishes around the top. The only two viable options are either painting it over or, use a new sheet of laminate and cut it to size.
I am dreading this job, but probably get on it this weekend.

Aloha,
Joe