'89 Arriva 2050 Restoration

Spend the money on a dust deputy, a long shop vac hose (mie is 13ft, I think), and a remote control outlet. The long hose allows your vacuum to be out of the boat, giving you space to work. The remote outlet lets you control the vacuum that is now out of your reach, and the dust deputy means you'll almost never clog another shop vacuum filter.

Grinder with a flap disc is the way. Hold it in one hand, vacuum hose in the other, or get creative with your legs like Scott said. Build an air tight tent over the boat with painters plastic and painters tape. Duct in fresh air with a fan on low through the keyhole.

I forgot to mention. I use a 6.5hp shop vac with 3 hoses coupled together. the shop vac sits outside the boat.

todhunter said:

Spend the money on a dust deputy, a long shop vac hose (mie is 13ft, I think), and a remote control outlet. The long hose allows your vacuum to be out of the boat, giving you space to work. The remote outlet lets you control the vacuum that is now out of your reach, and the dust deputy means you'll almost never clog another shop vacuum filter.

Grinder with a flap disc is the way. Hold it in one hand, vacuum hose in the other, or get creative with your legs like Scott said. Build an air tight tent over the boat with painters plastic and painters tape. Duct in fresh air with a fan on low through the keyhole.

Click to expand...

Already on the way. My woodworking neighbour lent me his separator, I have a 20 ft hose arriving today and put a switched extension cord together over the weekend. So far I've been doing the boot on the hose dance and shooting the dust into and while that gets 90% there's still the really light stuff that floats out of suction range.

The boat is already in one of those garage in a box tents and I'm thinking of putting a pair of box fans with air filters at one end to draw the inevitable floating dust and capture it.

I dissected a section of removed stringer for fun. It appears that solid boards were in style when this boat was made. My nose says it's some variety of cedar but I'm not a woodworker so that's just a guess. The glass was vaguely bonded on one face and not at all on the other.

Solid wood is bad

redneck joe said:

Solid wood is bad

Click to expand...

Agreed. They didn't even use clear boards, the spot where they keyed the ski locker bulkhead into the stringer went through a massive knot in the stringer and at first I was confused when a big chunk of round wood fell out. I'll be using 3/4 ply for the stringers when it goes back together.

On my 84, I ended up using a carbide carving disc as it seemed most efficient for grinding.
One of these:


It worked well but you still had to hit some areas with a flap disc... IE didnt fit. 36 grit and down if you can find them, work better imo.

Just a comparison between the two, the metal disc does great. The dust collector attachments are crap. Too bulky to do intricate work like needed most of the time.


My outer stringers were a similar solid board... if you wanna call them stringers even. They were tabbed in on one side with no cap. I think they were there for deck support and staples. When I rebuilt I replaced them with ply and made them structural.

You're going to be amazed how different the boat feels when you're done. Mine always felt solid but it was a totally different feeling after all that work. And with all the wet foam removed below the waterline, it rolls less when anchored up.

And I joked about how much lighter mine would be after I fixed everything... but with how much better built it is, I think it actually made no difference. I picked up no speed. A shame, I should've weighted it before getting it just to see.

Good luck. You're doing great.

Pmt133 said:

On my 84, I ended up using a carbide carving disc as it seemed most efficient for grinding.

Click to expand...

I've been thinking about those. Some of the tabbing in my boat is just insanely thick, a good 3/8-1/2 inch in areas. I hate the idea of leaving it there because it's so poorly done, but at the same time remembering that it's survived 30+ years and will take me ages to remove. If I could find something that would take it off in chips instead of dust that would be a big help. Some of the wood carving discs have a set of teeth that look like a horror movie prop.

It's a little bit fun to look at the construction forensically as it take it apart. The hull skin is woven glass. On top of that is a layer of neat (no glass/filler/etc) resin, with lots of air bubbles. Next is a very dry layer of chopped mat poorly bonded to the resin (I can chip it off with a chisel), and then a massively thick layer of resin rich chopped mat, and finally gel wherever that was used. I've taken the bilge and most of the transom back down to the base woven layer and will build it back up from there.

Crazy_Pilot said:

I've been thinking about those. Some of the tabbing in my boat is just insanely thick, a good 3/8-1/2 inch in areas. I hate the idea of leaving it there because it's so poorly done, but at the same time remembering that it's survived 30+ years and will take me ages to remove. If I could find something that would take it off in chips instead of dust that would be a big help. Some of the wood carving discs have a set of teeth that look like a horror movie prop.

It's a little bit fun to look at the construction forensically as it take it apart. The hull skin is woven glass. On top of that is a layer of neat (no glass/filler/etc) resin, with lots of air bubbles. Next is a very dry layer of chopped mat poorly bonded to the resin (I can chip it off with a chisel), and then a massively thick layer of resin rich chopped mat, and finally gel wherever that was used. I've taken the bilge and most of the transom back down to the base woven layer and will build it back up from there.

Click to expand...

I know the type. I used this for grinding off my transom.

While rotted, it was still constructed well enough and there was enough of a lack of room that it was way too time consuming to go with chop and pry. This worked great for that, getting cut tabbing flat and chipping away skins. It was my general demolition part after cutting the major section out.

I don't reccomend it on really thick glass though as it has a tendency to kick back. Got a few good cuts from this not from that but from moving while it was spinning down accidentally.

Pmt133 said:

On my 84, I ended up using a carbide carving disc as it seemed most efficient for grinding.
One of these:
View attachment 409217

Click to expand...

Man, I just bent mine today. My DA vibrated it off the swim platform and on to the ground. I haven't even had this one very long.

They don't work well on wood though, you'll still need a 36 geit roloc or flap disc for that.

Well another scorching hot weekend so what's better than getting suited up and turning fiberglass into dust? The tent turns into a greenhouse when the sun hits so I put the garden hose on top on a mist setting. Keeping it wet helped massively.



The philosophy when this boat was build seems to have been "You don't have to do it well if you do it lots". My god the tabbing is ridiculous.

Some of the transom tabbing. I've been taking this off with a chisel, it just lifts off the roving.


I sharpened a drywall spreader and have been tapping it under the tabbing to lift off big sheets. The first inch is barely bonded to the hull and peels away with barely any effort.


More absurdly thick, poorly bonded tabbing. In the piece on the right side of the picture you can see a lighter pink underneath the edge. All of that is free from the hull skin below.


Dust management setup. The vacuum has a bag inside.


My complement of demo tools (recip saw not in the picture). The surface grinder is great for dust control. It came with a very small adapter that choked flow but I made a new one on the 3D printer and it pulls really well.


And this guy. This is the most terrifying tool I've ever held. It instantly vaporizes anything it touches and requires the utmost respect and care. Bump it into something and it'll carve a half inch deep slot before you know you've made a mistake. It does work brilliantly for striping off the thick tabbing though! The most frightening part is that it's a 5 inch disc so my 4.5 inch guard doesn't fit. I'm wearing doubled up gloves whenever it's running.


My biggest enemy is the heat. Not so much for me but for the tools. The reason I have so many things out is that I can't run any of them more than a handful of minutes before they're getting hot enough to feel through my gloves. I rotate through them and hit different areas to spread out the abuse.

We fun stuff is almost over is appears

redneck joe said:

We fun stuff is almost over is appears

Click to expand...

Nah, still got lots of fun left. I've only just started ripping the bow seats apart, still have to pull out the wood strips buried in the chines, lots of grinding.... What I really need is a vacation where I can just work on this thing for a few straight days.