TOPIC: Arkansas Traveler repair

I have an Arkansas traveler 14" aluminum boat built in mid 60's I believe. It needs a lot of work to restore it. The top of the boat had oak trim. It has all rotted and now all there is is the aluminum. originally it was one strip or 1 1/2 " x 3/4" oak on the inside than the aluminum than 2 more strips of 1 1/2" x 3/4" oak. These were all riveted together. One end of the wood went under the mini deck and the other end went under the transom corner pieces. My question is what is the best way to replace these and keep the proper shape of the boat. I believe I must take off the rear transom corners. I thought of soaking the wood but once it is in place the wood would not dry properly. I will have to use stove bolts and nuts in place of rivets and try to work along with clamps. I think the top of the boat where this wood goes is called the gunwales.
All ideas are appreciated Thanks Fred

here is a video to check out. This may help you out ?

Yeah you have two choices, soak the wood for a week then clamp it in place until it dries or steam them either in a steam box or in place with a 6mil sleeve like in the video. I've used both methods actually. The steaming is pretty easy actually. I used a turkey fryer to make my steamer. Go to this link fiberglassics.com/forum/member-projects/90995-53-18-century-resorter-finally.html?start=200 It's my '53 Century Resorter restoration. This page shows the setup I used and it works great. Using the homemade 6mil sleeve let's to slide it off and clampmin place right away and not loose time pulling it out of a stem box.\\Just my 2 cents. By the way the wood dries faster from steaming than soaking.

Bob

Thank You Chuck and Bob I think I will try steaming Where do you get the 6 mil sleeve material. It is still plenty cold here in Vermont but I will be ready to try this in a couple weeks
Fred

Uline.com sells it but it's in 1000 ft rolls depending how wide you need ? any where from 44 bucks and up, for the roll search plastic sleeve.
McMaster-Carr looks like they have 500 ft roll for $33.24 on up depending On how wide you need the bag. For McMaster-Carr type in the search Plastic bag cut to length.
I'm guessing Grainger sells it too ?

Actually if I rmember right I got mine from Home Depot.

Bob

Chuck what size should I get 3 inch or 4 inch. The strips I need to steam are 1 1/4 inch x 1/2 inch x 14'. I will need to steam 6 pieces
Thanks Fred

A few considerations :
From the video it looks like his bag was about 3 times the width of the piece that he steamed ?
That would mean you would need 3-3/4 tall bag ?
BUT, I guess it depends on how big the steam tube is that you will be using ?
Secondly, you may enjoy steaming stuff, and may find the next piece is wider than the bag ?
4" x 1000 ft is 66 bucks ?

What Waterwings did was get a roll of 6 mil plastic drop cloth at Lowes. He cut his own bag width .
So if you are making a 4" bag, you'll need probably a 8-1/2 wide strip x as long as a bag you need. fold it in half.
Put a piece of parchment paper, under and over the opened seam to keep the iron from sticking to the plastic, and use a regular
ironing board iron about medium temp to fuse the plastic layers together to make the bag.
I've never tried it ? But I'm sure it worked, because waterwings did it already.
From the Home Depot 6 mil 10 ft wide x 25 ft long piece of plastic is 25 bucks + parchment paper sheets 3 bucks at a grocery or walmart and an iron (hopefully you have one ?)

I guess it's up to you which route you take ?

Sorry should have gone into details. CHuck is right I got a 6 mil drop cloth roll 25' long, was less than $25 I think. Figure out how wide your board is, double that then add about 1 3/4" . Fold in half and do what Chuck said put it between parchment paper and iron a 3/4" seam the whole length. You should be able to get parchement paper at the Dollar store. If you go to that link I posted it shows how I did it and how I connected everything. Works great, I did it again with the side plnks for the woody boat wagon I[m making for my granddaughter. That one is posted in the wood boat forum on here.

Bob

Thanks Bob and Chuck

Bob on your steamer how do you know how much water is in the pot and how do you add water. Also on the bag do you seal it tight with the wood inside or do you have any vent holes. Do you think a 2 inch hose plastic hose from a vaccume cleaner work for the supply from the steamer to the bag.

Hey Fred,
So it depends on how long I'm going to have to steam. When I was steaming the 2"x2" chines that required 2 hours of steaming so I filled the pot most of the way. For the 1/2 thick stuff it only needs about 30 minutes so I fill maybe a third of the half way just to be sure. It depends on what size pan you're using also. I'm using my 70 quart turkey fryer so......... The problem with adding water later is it has to get back up to temp and steam which could give inconsistent steaming.

The bad depnds on how much of the wood needs steaming. For my chines I layed them in the chine beds and clamped about 1/3 of the board or so and steamed about 10' since that's the part that really needed to bend so the bag was long enough to cover what needed steaming and enough for the pipe to go in from the steamer. I used some long garbage tie wraps that I saved from kids tousy that bound the toy to the cradboard box. I've laso used shorter ones twisted together. I wrap the plastic sleeve around the steam pipe nice and tight then put the twist ties around it tightly. On the other end I wrap it with tie wraps as tight as I can get away with. There is usually enough airgap that will let steam out that end. When I'm doing shorter boards that stay in the bag all the way, theres usually enough room from wrapping the bag with the tie wrap on the end that enough steam can get out.

I think the vacuum hose will work as long as it's internal wire reinforced kind because that hto steam will soften that hos eup a lot. Prime example to practice and coem up with some kind of box I used that 4" pVC, the thin none schedule 40 stuff asnd drilled holes in the sides to put wood woels through for a "shelf" and the thing almost collapsed on itself! The only thing preventing it was the dowels. LOL
Bob