35 Bertram: full restoration & repower

I have heard you can do the same refrigerator trick with with mixed awl grip


I built every thing out of nidacore, foam nomex honeycomb to lose weight all but the factory bulkheads. I may have cut as much as 5 or 6 thousand lbs so far. I thought of using a composit but the only core that acts like plywood under a compression load a little is nilaboard, I built engine bunks with the stuff and covered in with kevlar...but it will not soak water so whats the point of using it for thro hull shims. See the ply is only glassed to the hull not inclosed when you fully inclose wood it rots it needs to breath as they say. Also if you leak you need it to swell so you cant glass the top or sides... cores are funny there not good for putting a screw or nut and bolt thro it will compress the aria right under the washer and start to delaminate the whole thing, you need a solid core if your going to do any bolting, that is why bertram put aluminum in the balsa decks and hard top where the seating and fly bridge screws in. Cores do not like to bend they are strong cuz they make an I beam if one side of glass skin moves integrity is lost and you will have a failure....

The only reason to put a shim under a thro hull on a solid glass hull like my old bertram is to stop water if you leak bertram did not put shims under the drain plug cuz there is no valve to turn and stress the sealant that over time may cause a leak. The hull is over an inch thick at some of the thro hulls much stronger then any shim you can think of.. new cored boats need a shim to reinforce so the first reason "stopping leaks" to put a shim there was abandon buy boat builders at the first trade show that they went to... in place a shiny piece of junk.... there was a lot of thought given at one point to this kinda stuff but to day junk sells and most times the bigger the boat get the dumber the owner gets at least with power boaters....

I never tried the awl grip trick, I spray awlgrip so can't risk shooting bad paint. I even dump whats at the bottom of my pot at the end of a shoot and start fresh.

I got a look at divynicell and it will work as a shim like nilaboard its strong stuff. I still just think that plywood has that one benefit of soaking water and swelling, there is no other shim I have come across that seems to able to soak and dry a couple 1000 times and remain unchanged. And I am in the minority here on that, but it just the way I see it...

Thank you

I hate to put up the shots of un finished work up, before I have the shot of it looking finished and clean... I have a lot more shots where the boat looks like its a pile of scrap. Its funny with big projects at times if feels like the world thinks your crazy, un till they can start to see your vision.

I will list some new shots of the bilge and the muir windlass and hynautic controls we installed also the thro hulls seacocks and ocean led's and stuff... if there is some thing you'd like to see more of from the project let me know as I all ready have 100's of photos over the last two years..

stainless thru hulls and muir windlass

here are some in progress shots

dirty bilge

getting it all in place

interlux 2000 then the micron 66 & the water line

love the smell....

water line and hull cores...

the thickest is next to the keel 1 1/4 the second is by the side on the bottom for the sink drain 1"

transom bottom core & stainless passage bomars

1 1/2" solid!!!!!!!!! note the 1/16 carbon barrier coat...

Thanks Jon

The ez way will be to cut the ply wood in between the center two stringers.. Take a whole saw or some thing to give your self a nice size pilot hole then use a reciprocating saw to cut the two sides along the inside of the stringers. I'd use a demo blade or nail in bedded blade, Do Not Cut the Stringer!!! give your self room when you cut blind and clean up once you have a hole you can see into... And you may need a hammer or crow bar to bust out the corners, then you can pull the old tank out and drop your new bag in... If the old lumber gets trashed and it may or will, just cut a piece of 3/4 or 1/2 ply about an inch larger then the hole and screw it into the old ply wood that is still in place. When you do a project like I did a full refit you do not have to worry about scratch paint or braking stuff a crow bar a sledge hammer takes it apart fast what comes off go in to the dumpster... Only after she rolls out of the paint both do I need to worry about every thing a boat owner worries about so I think my view on any one job is a little bent, its all just a blur and as a whole its years of my life. Restoring a boat is like fixing an old 4 sided house that has to move 25mph in the water. Don't get me wrong it was fun but now I just want to go fishing.

Any thing that was wood was replaced with Nita core. It's a plastic core that has a scrim the you can layer with cloth till it as strong or stronger then ply wood with out ever rotting. Unlike starboard it can be painted with awlgrip. It's also up to 50% lighter than plywood. I used 20 some odd sheats in this project.

If you open the floor from center stringer to stringer u can pull the tank. There plywood under the tank so nothing sharp down there. Stainless is heavy and alu rots Both are $$$$ and a blater needs no vent and when that go bad there an ez swap.

I wish I lived in Detroit cuz the guys at Michigan composites are nice and will custom make you the sheets as large as you like " can you say one piece deck" the guys at Nita in fla are butt licks in a big time way,,,, I drove 4 hours to have them tell me that sold my order out from under me & then have them mark up the price on me like 50% and waste two weeks to refund me my deposit... as to where the guy at Michigan composites is well are mid western and well that is refreshing in the boating world. I just use the word nita cuz its a smaller word and I am layz .. they also have some nice foam core stuff and it all has its place but it mostly boils down to opinion. after all you have honeycomb hull boats and foam out there.... now why I like the plastic cores over foam,,,,, now nothing bonds to plastic but what they do with the cores it smart. they take the plastic honey comb sheet and attach a plastic skin using heat bonding, the skin is like a light spun cotton only plastic, the resin will not stick to plastic but the skin soaks it like a synthetic sponge and the resin locks into the fibers then you can start laying down your glass and wetting out your fiberglass and just repeat till its as strong as you need.. now the prob with cores is bonding and most modern cores meat there doom on this point the honeycomb boats of the have bad storm fead back for this reason, most were nomex honey comb see when a cored lay up bends you can delaminate flex it back and forth and pop you can lose a hole side. that is cuz you are only bonding to the edge of the comb or surface of the foam but the plastic cores are bonded at a molecular level using heat so the are one unit and the way the scrim soaks resin it gives you killer bond to lay a fiberglass substrate.

now there are a lot of nomex bertrams from the 80's with a bad rep and a lot of plains flying around with out falling apart! how dose that work well I'll I'll tell you... air plains are built using an epoxy pre preg triaxil carbon or in other words 3 layers of uniaxil cloth stiched and pre soaked in heat activated resin. now they use nomex as a core as did bertram and nomex is a kevlar reinforce fiber dipped in photonic resin.... but what air bus and bowing do that bertram did not other then using carbon and epoxy that will bond better is the air plain guys use a big autoclave a real big heated mold that bonds the crap out of it all.. then they get nutty with an exray to check there work. the faa is strict so they keep the preprg carbon in a freezer and toss after only a month or two in fact all the stuff they use is dated with a short shelf life.... boats are unregulated you can scoop a truck load of dog crap and use it for a core and glass it up and market the boat as THE SH!T no one will stop you. kinda stinks

more holes in my boat

well I put on some tabs and stuff like the ocean led lights, and the platform test fit.

ocean led

all the lights are ocean led, there are two 1520 blue on each end of the transom and one 3010 white in the center there are also two x520 blue on the sides, I have one more 1520 & x520, I am ether going to put the extra 1520 on the bottom in the engine room & the x520 in the transom fish tank seeing as it has a large viewing window in it. or buy one more of each & put two x520 on the sides and the two 1520 between the 1520's and the 3010 two fill the transom more.... still thinking