Today I stated working on my boat again. I didn’t really mean too, it just kind of happen. I used an 1/8″ drill bit and drill out all of the rivets on the transom cap. Thanks to the folks on Iboat.com for the help on that. I just went slow and had no problems. After I got the cap off I could see that it didn’t look good. It wasn’t as soft as it looks but it was bad. I’m glad I decided to try to do this, I think it will be well workth it. Unfortunailtly the cap has seen better days. I will have to try to get it fixed or make some kind of replacement, but that will come later.
Once I got the cap off I tried to take the wood out. I took two of those hooks you use to hang your bike from the ceiling in the garage. I figured the wood was bad enough it would just pull right out but I thought I would give it a try. I pulled and pulled but I couldn’t get the stupid think out. I looked around a little bit and found a couple rivets that were drilled out but still not out of the way and I found one bold that had no head or nut but was still connected to the aluminum in the transom. Once I pounded that out I pulled one more time and it came right out.
I originally thought I had to take out a ton of rivets but I didn’t realize that the wood didn’t go all the way down. I’m not sure why I thought that. I tested one rivet and realized that I only went through one thin layer I took another look and saw I was an idiot. Glad I didn’t have to drill out all of the rivets, it would have taken forever.
I spend the next half hour or so trying to clean out the inside of that tiny little space. It was gross. Sand, bugs, wood hunks, and some cacoons. It was really hard to get it clean, I basically used a rag wrapped around a stick and scrubbed…hard. Now I can cut some more wood and make a new transom. I just need to figure out what kind of wood to use.
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