Stripping and re-epoxying the deck on a Cheaspeake 18

Builder's Forum
1

So I built this boat 27 years ago but life got in the way and its been in storage in a barn for the past 6 years. Finally pulled the boat out only to find that mouse droppings have stripped the varnish and it looks like they even stained into the wood in places. My plan is to strip the varnish and then sand off the epoxy until I get stains off (it worked on the hatches so hope it works on the rest of the deck) then revarnish. My questions:

  1. This deck wasn’t glassed but I am reading that is recommended now. If the boat survived everything but mouse droppings over its life, how necessary is this now? What am I really gaining besides weight?
  2. How much epoxy should I order to just do the deck? I presume about twice as much if I glass it than if I just coat the wood. Is a half gallon of resin and a quart of hardener about right if I glass it?
  3. Anything else I should know before I dive in (since I’m 27 years out of date)? Are there other things I should be doing once I’ve pulled these layers off?
2

if it survived all this time without glass, then yes, for you and how you use it, its probably just added weight.

the other change that was made was they added some rims around the hatch openings that helped the chesapeakes have signficantly more water-tight hatches. again, if it has not been an issue until now, it’s probably not worth it. but very helpful for folks who are constantly taking water on the decks or rolling. but for most fair weather paddlers, not a significant difference.

no other significant change i am aware of in the basic hull construction that is relevant to a refinishing project.

i refinished a 20 year old chesapeake…so the two items - glassing the deck and the hatch rims…were the only items that i could recall having changed when i did my refinish.

3

Thanks. I am definitely a fair weather paddler. Going to look into the hatch rims though since they were never water tight, in my experience.