Refitting the forward toe rail

They say a picture is worth 1000 words and so the picture below should tell you why we decided to do a major modernization on the toe rail (which is the wood underneath the lifeline handrail vertical uprights).  In the picture below you can see how the toe rail of our boat stacked up (or fell down as it were) against that of the boat on blocks next to us, a classic Egg Harbor of about the same vintage as Third Wave.  The Egg Harbor has a more desirable welded stainless handrail but we did not want to put our money there.  But the toe rail on the Egg Harbor was freshly varnished at the time whereas ours was worn out grey teak.  The wood was uneven after years of wear and the wood was so old it would no longer take varnish.   And prepping and varnishing the toe rail the proper way, without getting varnish all over everything is no small job.  Yet with the age of our toe rail wood, the best we could hope to expect the varnish to stay was maybe 4-6 months.  Maybe.  Redoing the toe rail twice a year for the rest of our boating lives did not carry much appeal.

Now at this point, a purist would have said it's time to break out the checkbook and buy a new teak toe rail.  A major problem with that, besides all the work involved, is the cost.  I can't quote an exact price but this is thousands of dollars for materials and labor.  As one old timer posting on a boating chat room put it, "Replacing toe rails is not for an amateur. Forming wood to three dimensions is not a skill you duplicate on the first trip. Sorry, this really is not easy.".  And those who do boat repair know damned well.  They figure if you are dumb enough to ask the cost you might be dumb enough to overpay for the work. And of course teak wood is astronomically priced.

Additionally, just putting new teak down doesn't mean you have no maintenance going forward.  Maintenance is simply possible at that point.  A far better option for us was to just rip the rotten teak off and throw it in the dumpster and then glass the seam shut and gel coat the surface.  Then and only then would there be no more varnishing of the exterior bright work.  Yeah I know, a lot of people will hate the idea but none of them offered to re-do the teak every 4-6 months so they don't get a say.  Besides, exterior teak actually makes  boat look old and we would rather have a more modern look that is far cheaper, easier to maintain, and guaranteed not to leak.

The picture to the left shows more of the "before condition" of the teak toe rail.  We knew that the toe rail covered seams and that there would be a significant amount of glassing, filling and fairing to get it right, but the end result was deemed to be worth it.






Step 1 was to remove all the stainless hardware.  That included the ancient looking and weather worn chrome plated air scoops as well as the lifeline vertical uprights and the old 6" cleats and deck fills. 

 

The cleats were old, incorrectly positioned, and too small.  Plus there were old style and made of chrome plated brass.  316 stainless is cheaper to buy new for a larger 10" cleat with modern styling and very low maintenance.  Also, the existing cleats had no backing plates.  We fixed all of that by creating 3/8" backing plates from 304 stainless and then drilling and tapping holes.

The old deck fills and hardware all came off without too much resistance.

We tore the old teak wood off easily into small chunks with claw hammers which is a testament to how old and washed out it was.  New teak would have fought us tooth and nail to remove by force.  The remaining brass screws either unscrewed with a Phillips screwdriver or came out with vice grips.

The center of the seam was then ground out with a big Makita grinder polisher equipped with 36 grit flap discs.  Man did this throw some nasty fiberglass dust into the air for 30+ feet all around the boat when it was happening.

We then glassed the seam in with multiple layers of 17 oz cloth and epoxy resin.

And then came the multiple layers of fairing compound.  Spread it on, sand it off, gel coat it in order to see how bad it still was, sand out most of the gel coat and reapply fairing compound.  It took about 4 full cycles of this to get it to a passable state.

The down sloping portions here needed significant glassing and fairing to get them into shape.  There are no shortcuts here.  Any shortcut you take results in an amateurish looking finished product.

Here's the port side.

You really can't tell what you have until you put some gel coat on it.  While getting close, this still had too much ripple in it and we had to hit it again with the "long board" which was a piece of 4x6" lumber with handles that sandpaper had been taped to the bottom of.  Once the gel coat was sanded down, another lay of totalboat epoxy filler was added.

Finally we got the toe rails fair and right all around and so we decided to polish, buff and wax a 6' section just to get a feel for how it would eventually look.  It's hard to tell from the picture but that is literally a show room finish.  The hole is there for the flush mount gas fill deck fitting.

More to come!