Traveler holes

A comment was posted that stated Abbotts' boats had a wire traveler and not a metal rod as I had suggested.   Not being familiar with the boat from back in the day, my clue for the metal rod was the holes in the blocking at the transom.  That suggested a metal rod was used. I have restored several Ventnor boats that do have a metal rod as a traveler.  The blocking for the Abbott is identical to the Ventnor.  I looked at the blocks closer and there are two small holes on either side of the big hole suggesting that there was a through deck fitting and not a rod.    A wire traveler is a lot easier that the metal rod.  We'll see what this boat gets...

  

Dry fit

I spent most of my time today just dry fitting various parts back on the boat just to see if they fit.  I am using straps with comealongs to nudge the boat back into shape.  I think I've just about got it.  As you can see the only real misalignment is at the mast partner strip.  The center line is marked with a faint pencil mark.  It's about 3/4 inch out.  All of the other parts of the boat have fallen in line with the old marks from the original build.  Something I find quite remarkable.  As you can see I've only had to make one deck frame and a few gussets.  If you look at the back of the boat you can see where the brass traveler was installed.  We'll be making a new one from stainless steel.  I bought a silicone/bronze rod for "Last One"  but when I took it to a machine shop to have it bent, it broke.  The SS was much easier to work with.

As a sidebar I filled in the holes in the CB trunk with fairing compound.   Because I glued the trunk back together with epoxy I didn't need the screws..

CB case restored

I got the case glued back together and it fits in the boat!  Not sure what I want to do with the holes left by the old screws.  Back in the day the glue wasn't very good so they used screws as the clamps. The screws stayed in and were part of the structure.  I can get bronze/brass screws to fill in the holes or just fill them with thickened epoxy.

Splash boards

Along time ago in  galaxy far......  Well that was the movie.  These splash boards are from a more elegant time.  They swoop down from the CB trunk  and wind up all the way down the side of the cockpit.  Like everything else, these boards need a lot of work but I'm going to restore them as best I can and reuse them.  I know I could not make replacements like this.

The two little chunks of wood under the boards are from the cb case.  They are trim pieces for the top of the case.

CB case outside

This is what I got done today.  Not much.  It took about 20-60 grit paper to get the old varnish off. It just wanted to stay on the boat!

CB case inside

Another tidbit about this boat.  They fiberglassed the inside of the centerboard case.  I wonder how they did that!

Centerboard case

I got the CB case out of the boat.  I used my Dremel multimax and cut the case from the keel.  It came off fairly clean.  It was glassed from the inside out to around the bottom.  I'll take it apart and rebuild it.  

The other thing I did was make the fwd deck stringer.  There was half of the original in the boat so I duplicated the half and then flipped it over.  It all came out on center.  You might see a problem developing on the deck.  The center strut that runs from the bow to the CB case is not lining up.  The boat was racked so I guess thats where its starting to show up.  We'll keep an eye on that and see what happens when I start putting the back of the boat together.