Restore a Boat
Depending on the scope of the boat restoration, this can be either a simple weekend project or encompass years of effort that is not for the weak at heart. The entire project needs to be assessed before starting regarding level of effort, what is to be gained, if there are other alternatives (such as buying a used boat in better condition) and actual usage of the boat itself (show piece, daily driver, etc.).
Steps
- Make a plan. Plan your work by breaking everything down into sections, like chapters in a book. Chapter one is planning. The next phase might be stripping the boat in preparation for the work.
- Prepare a work site, gather tools and supplies, carve out a dedicated time on a regular basis with your schedule, consult experts in the field, and also outsource certain components as needed to certain experts. Also prepare the boat itself, which may mean (depending on the size and scope of the project) taking off the boat hardware, removing the seats, floor, instrumentation, windshield and sometimes even the engine. A full-blown restoration may even involve removing the stringers and re-encapsulating these with new layers of fiberglass.
- Break the task down into manageable tasks.For example, if you plan to replace the floor, after preparation, salvage and use the old wood as templates for the new floor, taking new measurements (in case the old wood experienced shrinkage or damage of the years), obtaining sheets of marine-grade plywood, gathering a circular saw and jigsaw for precision cuts as well as saw horses.
- Wrap the new floor with layers of fiberglass to add both strength and durability against rot and corrosion. Covering anything with fiberglass is an entirely different process that requires different tools and supplies.
- Work your plan through to completion, making revisions as you go. The order of steps may change, other tasks may be added, others changed. It can be a long process.
Tips
- Read, read, read. There are lots of sources on the Internet and in books.
- The more help that you have, the better, as long as they know what they are doing and can cooperate and work well together.
- Learn as much as you can, but if your boat restoration project is huge, you cannot learn it all at once.
- Get support from people who are not directly helping do the actual work. If they are on-board and supportive, then this helps morale. If it is a constant battle because you are always tracking in gelcoat dust from sanding, or horrible fumes from covering the floor with fiberglass, or messing up a nice kitchen sink - then you might want to think twice.
- Ask questions first. Before using a new product that you are unfamiliar, ask an expert. Spraying boat paint WILL kill you from toxic fumes if you do not have the proper painting booth and hazardous-materials painting suit. You risk explosions, fires, or severed limbs with equipment if you do not know what you are doing.
- You do not have to already be a blue-collar working class hero, even to do a very involved boat restoration. But you will have to get your hands dirty, unless you have a lot of money to pay someone else to get their hands dirty. This will invariably involve a lot of learning, some trial and error, some setbacks, and sometimes even horribly-gone wrong mistakes. Eventually there are triumphs. It can be a long, hard lonely road. Get support and make a lot of loyal, dependable friends first. The more intense the boat restoration, the more it becomes an exercise in overcoming.
Warnings
- If all of the above has not scared you out of a boat restoration, then best of luck. I went into my full-blown boat restoration extremely naive, lacking knowledge and not having a clue. It was a rude awakening. However, expertise can be learned and practice makes perfect. Experience is the best teacher. Character values, such as patience, persevering, hard work, dedication, and having obsessive-compulsive desires for precision will drive and compel someone to a real possible and viable victory. There are great rewards, but there is a huge price to pay along the way. Be aware. Good luck to you.
- Do not go into a major boat restoration project casually! If you think that you can just juggle a massive gelcoat job in between soccer practice, family bar-be-ques, your career, the in-laws and do this in your "spare time" - then think again - you risk a high chance of being in for a rude awaking and join the thousands of people which projects that never get done. Don't be one of those guys. A major boat restoration job (especially one involving a lot of gelcoat work) is not something to be flippant or casual about. This is hard work that is dirty, smelly, involves fumes, skin rashes, loud noises from power tools that annoy neighbors, consumes power tools (I went through 5 orbital sanders and 3 mouse sanders) and destroys kitchen sinks unless you have a garage sink. This takes either a very understanding wife or being a single guy.
- Understand the concept of "negative value". This means that a "boat" which amounts to only a worn out shell, lacking anything else represents a future cost in either a restoration (which are rarely "profitable" or the cost of paying to have the boat hauled to a junkyard. Until this "boat" has real value, this represents a liability and will, until the boat is functionally useful.
- Simple is best. A boat that just needs some patch-up work and a few touch-ups is a perfect "boat restoration". A fiberglass shell that you want to turn into a boat will require a dedicated, focused effort over many years, people and MANY thousands of dollars.
- There is no such thing as an inexpensive quickie gelcoat job. You are going to spend the same amount of money if you did it quickly and carelessly as opposed to if you are precision and a perfectionist. The difference is time and patience.
- If you take on an intense boat restoration project, and eventually triumph, you most likely will end up with a specular boat. The downside is that every time you go to use your boat, you might find yourself so hyper-cautious that you might not enjoy your showpiece as much as just a regular boat that gets used, consumed and eventually sold or discarded.
- A simple project, such as new hardware, upholstery or floor can be done over a summer on weekends, with a family and between family activities as a "casual venture". A full-blown boat restoration is not a casual venture - or it will take 30 years to get it done - if ever. Do NOT try to take on too much. If you have family, friends and relatives competing for your time, then you will be sorry if you take on a boat restoration project that will suck the life out of you for years and consume your time, money and patience. The less you have to do on a boat, the better. Steer clear of gelcoat work - minor places to fix are one thing, but a new gelcoat job either requires experts and thousands to tens of thousands of dollars - or many years of your life.
- The failure rate for a lot of projects is already high. Thousands of households have the "great idea" that people were in love with the idea, but not the reality.
- It is not advisable to just pick out a junked boat in a salvage yard, especially one that is really far gone and needs a lot of work. The best "restoration" is upholstery or floor work. Any gelcoat work will take mountains of time, energy, effort and money. Sanding off the entire gelcoat (which I did) and re-gelcoating the entire boat from a shell is "extreme boat restoration". Like me, this will cost you years of intense work that seems to never end.
- Know what you are getting into first. What you may think of as a restoration project that will take a few weekends, could take as much as ten years, 3,500 hours of labor and $12,000 or more - if what you have in mind is making your boat a classic showpiece.
- When doing work on the underside that requires the boat to be lifted, pay close attention and support your boat very well, with failure redundancy before climbing underneath a boat that weights thousands of pounds. If it falls, it will kill you if you are underneath the boat.
- Once done, then insure the boat with an AGREED VALUE policy (NOT a stated value policy that depreciates your boat, thus negating your hard work and hours for paper-pushers who do not know boats or the value of your time). I recommend Progressive Insurance for boat insurance policies.
