Anchor Pulpit rebuilds/core trouble foreward (and fixes)
Gezuz, what is with the people who put some things together?
The teak inlays on my pulpit are wasted and require replacement. So today, out came the wood chisel to get the boards off.
They were 5200'd down, and then black cauk run around the edges. Ok. No problem there.
BUT - on assembly, the people involved screwed the boards down from the underside. Of course there's no way to get THAT off without pulling the entire pulpit!
WHY? The 5200 ain't going anywhere, and the screw embedment was all of less than 1/2" - into teak, that's gonig to do NOTHING.
Except, that is, make for a real serious PITA on this project, because now I'm going to have to take a dremel to about 30 screw shanks and cut them off before I can replace the boards!
Grrrr..... (just venting here)
!#$)@#)!@#(%(@#(!@ More stupidity
Ok, so I got the Windless off. A piece of pipe, some PB Blaster, and a BFH did that. The amount of crud was exteme and the backing piece of plywood was wasted up underneath where you couldn't see it. Looked perfectly fine from the edges - trashed internally.
Definitely the right move to take this all apart...
So then I pull the piece of bowrail around the pulpit, the back two bolts, and figure its just sealant now, and a few screwdrivers and putty knives will get it off.
Nope.
Some numb-nuts (one of the previous owners?) apparently saw goop oozing out from under the platform. So what did they do? Wick in some EPOXY.
The pulpit coming off (slowly), but its ripping the gelcoat off the deck under the pulpit in the process. The only way I can come up with is to drive screwdrivers under the edge, working my way around, and literally tearing the joint apart. Fortunately it appears that whoever did this didn't use MUCH epoxy, and it didn't wick in very far (probably because the wood under there was sopping wet)
There's going to be significant cosmetic deck damage as a consequence, but that's not a huge deal, since it will be covered by the pulpit when I'm done. Its also nearly certain that some former owner did this, because there's no evidence that the epoxy got into the cloth - only the gelcoat and thus the skin-out (chopped strand) is coming up. I have to assume that if Hatt did this on original install they would have sanded off the gelcoat first, and there'd be no way I could get it apart at all.
THANK GOD it wasn't "done right". I'll sand it down, may lay another layer of glass cloth over it, epoxy that all in, fair it, and be done with that - but getting this thing apart is turning into a REAL pain in the ass.
Thank God all this will be hidden when the pulpit goes back on, or it would be MUCH worse and probably involve repainting the entire deck!
BTW, there was no indication that it was epoxied until I started running a screwdriver around to break the seal on the 5200 - and started seeing CSM and gelcoat in the crack behind the old 5200!
No turning back now - its gotta come apart.