Re: Sangster 21 Restoraton
Managed to put in a good week here while on Spring Break. Got everything cleaned out, all through hulls removed and hull ground bare or do I mean bear. Good grief man... not a fun job. Probably 40 hours on the dumb end of a variety of grinders getting it all cleaned up. Sure feels good to think I am done with that phase of the project! Kinda late now that I am done, but can anyone add to my fiberglass grinding techniques ? Searching showed most people using the workhorse 4-1/2 angle grinder for most of the job, but I sure found my 5 inch Makita had a lot more oomph and the disks lasted longer. I did use a diamond cut off blade for cutting through tabbing to remove deck and stringers. Good. Not so good having a spaz moment and cutting a slot through to the wet side of the hull! Apparently I am not the only one to do this, but not a particularly proud moment.
Does any one else do this? I use my 5 inch disks until they dull a bit, than I cut them down with an old pair of tin snips to make a disk for 4-1/2 grinder. Most of the wear occurs on the outer edge of the disk. I also find that the red fibre disk sanding pads only cut well for a couple of minutes, and then it is slower going. I hate using dull abrasives so I went through quite a pile of them. I found the 16 grit were the best for hogging material. Does any one use a higher quality abrasive pad? Fiberglass seems pretty tough on them and I wonder if Zirconium or other tougher/harder abrasive would be more effective? I feel I have much better control with a sharp disk rather than leaning on dull one!
Last day of grinding and I had some bigger flat areas to hit so I dug up Dad's old 7 inch Craftsman Professional Grinder ( heavy and noisy, must be circa 1970 or so). Should have brought out the big boy earlier on! Disk lasts longer and it really kicks up a snow storm of grinding debris. My advise would be to use the biggest grinder you can handle, little ones for detail work but when there is miles of thick old tabbing to get through... let the big dog eat.
) the last of the grinding this evening and am planning for transom repair. Apparently since 1976 this boat has seen some battles, the transom looks like the back stop at the local shooting range! I think starting with a clean transom and putting my own holes in sounds like a good idea.
