Rough 1993 Ski soft floor

OK. Update time for anybody following my wet foam saga. I have dug out the wet foam in the section that was under the crack in my floor. I took some photos.

This is looking forward in the hole. This foam is dry. I've dug in for a few more inches and it's all dry.


This is looking aft. It's a long ways back there. I can't reach it with my hand, even when my shoulder is all the way down in the hole. I had to dig at it with a nail claw and a long screwdriver. It was really slow going.




I was a little surprised tonight to pull the lid off my shop vac and see that I filled it up along with the stuff I pulled out by hand and put in this 5-gallon bucket.


Next, I gotta figure out where to buy foam and then teach myself fiberglass repair.

Or, go look for a sale on pool noodles?

I know this has little to do with my wet foam (still digging - had not much spare time lately so progress is slow), but I found a trailer for my boat. Got a great deal (less than $500) I'm excited to get this step behind me. Going to re-carpet the bunks before I slide it under my boat. It's a little rusty here and there, but solid, and will work for the 1 mile trek from my house to the boat launch.







Kevin

i could possibly snap some pics of that 95 hull I have, the floor is out along with the foam, the complete structure is there, i really dont know if this is the correct structure or not since it was a display boat and has never been in the water.
i also have a 92 hull with a the foam out and there is a piece still up front and you can see the waterline about 6 inches up in the foam, this boat too was soaked and the stringers were completely rotted. im getting ready to cut that one up, I need the forward deck, the rest will get the sawzall....I really was thinking of using the front hull as a man door canopy

I would think the thick portions you are seeing are the top of the fiberglass "rib structure" in the boat. Someone posted the drawing. It's more like a corregated structure than the traditional ribs we see in the wood boats. Just my guess. BKH

I have been following this thread and no doubt the floor layup is different to the one I rebuilt. The floor in my Skier varied in thickness from very thick to barely being thick enough with no rhyme or reason other than inconsistency. Once a cut was made all the way around the perimeter of the floor the entire piece would pop out using a pry bar. It may not be that easy with the new composite system, I don't know. If the floor is bonded to the tops of the stringers you would probably have to cut the floor right up to the edges of the stringers, remove that piece of floor, and then grind the top of the floor on top of the stringer down to the desired height.

I understand your hesitation to go hacking away further, especially since you are taking one for the team digging into a post 92, but the time it would take to remove all the foam and floor will be less than what you have spent so far extracting foam by hand through a small opening in the floor. Keep in mind fiberglass is a really easy medium to work with with regards to putting the floor back in. I spent a couple of weeks digging into the stringers with screwdrivers and after I found that everything was wet, and convinced myself I could tackle the project, removed the floor and all the foam in 2 evenings.

At the very minimum I would remove the floor over the entire cavity you believe to be wet and get after it. Forget the little holes.

These may be of little help in your application but shows the concept.

Before


After cutting perimeter with angle grinder and removing floor

Keeganino wrote: Does not take that long to demo the floor and foam.

Granted you've done it once, right?    

Eric, you have done that before? Do you think that would suck the water out of the foam in my boat? How long would it take to dry everything out?

Kevin

Wow. That's an interesting idea. I don't think you'd ever get all the water doing that, and it might take a really long time since the water essentially leeches very slowly in the foam. Still, it might be worth a try just to see what happens.

I finally got a chance to dig into my foam a little more tonight. It's kind of weird and I'm looking for more thoughts from the experts here. The foam is wet, but not soaked. Is ANY wet foam bad? I'm beginning to wonder if this is worth the effort. The foam is still rigid and is quite hard to dig out because I'm working in such a small area.

The floor in my boat appears to be quite thick in many places. There are 3" disks (for lack of a better word) where the floor is thin. The problem is that there is no way I could dig out all the foam with a tiny three-inch hole as my access point.

Do I need to go after ALL the water? If the foam is still rigid, but still wet, is that a real problem?

A gardening spade sounds like a really good idea! Thanks for that.

This crack was the only area where there was an open wound in the floor. The other holes we all there only for screws, and they had screws in them so I am assuming that most of those didn't let water in.

Any thoughts about what I should do next? I'm thinking of trying to chip out as much foam as I can from here going aft and see if the floor gets "thin" again at some point. I will keep plugging away going forward as well and hope to find only dry foam or the bow of my boat at some point.

The hard part is that I don't know where else I should dig now. I have other spots where the floor flexes. Should I cut in there and see what I find or ignore it?

By the way, once I scrape away the foam the glass looks good. It is glass after all, so it can say wet forever with no ill effects.

Just to be clear, my main concern is that I don't know if I should venture into this floor too much with all these ridges and thick areas. What if that thick area is honeycomb or something like that? I'd hate to slice into that.

I also created a picture with more explanation of what you are looking at.

Here is the hole I have cut in my boat floor in search of wet foam under the crack that had been created by the seat frame.



I poked my camera down in the cut out. This is what the view looks like looking forward towards the bow. The "ridge" on the right (looks like it is in the center in this photo) is attached to the floor. It is sort of an upside-down U, although I can't get to the other side of the U because of the frame (wall on the right).



This is looking aft. You can see the ridge here on the left. You'll also see on the right the front end of a composite stringer. More on that in a second. You can also see a ridge right in front of you that runs side to side, and there is a thick section of floor just aft of that ridge.

Kevin this picture from the 97 brochure which shows the jig holding the stringers in place gives you a bit of an idea what is below the floor. Aussie also found some cross bracing between the stringers. Get some pictures while you have the foam out.

Kevin,

That is a new one for me, from what i saw underneath mine the floor looked flat. Just layed on top of the stringers, however i did not dig as aft as you.

you could laminate the floor over a glass like hassbeen showed on his build and then attach it to the boat.