The most commonly available <plywood> is, I believe, 4mm BS1088 Okoume, made in France and sold under the trade name "Okouply". It should be available to you at any specialty plywood outlet, or if you check out the "Boulter Plywoods" website, they will get it for you. It is very light (11-15 lbs.) and strong and the BS1088 rating means waterproof glue, two good sides, very tight glue lines and no voids, knots, filler or patches in any of the interior plys. Should be about $50.00 US a sheet. You can special order in 5 foot widths which allows for a one piece foredeck. Unfortunately, grain and colour are boring as it is a radial cut. I have been looking for some ribbon grain sapele or honduras mahogany in a BS1088 grade, without success. This is the wood used I believe by wood fb builders such as Severn and Delange, and looks much nicer when finished. Anybody know where to get this at a reasonable price???.

Have you tried Noah's, in Toronto?

Boulter's Plywood Corp. has several species of marine grade plywood including Ribbon Stripe Sapele and African Khaya (Genuine African Mahogany BS 1088). This is besides the Okoume BS 1088 they sell. Contact a Chris when you call (617) 666-1340 or fax (617) 666-8956. He has worked with us on our building project since the beginning and has been very good about the use of woods and how they are classified. Also M.L. Condon out of White Plains, N.Y. has an extensive stock of marine grade plywood. They carry Bruynzeel Regina and Honduras Flat Cut and of course they carry Okoume as well. Only the Okoume will be stamped BS 1088 as this is the only plywood they carry that is registered with Lloyd's of London as marine grade. Here is the story as we got it from several different sources about the BS 1088 stamp. First this stamp is a register stamp given by Lloyd's of London guarantying marine grade. Okoume or Occume, depending which company you purchase from is Gaboon Mahogany. This is not a particulary interesting wood to look at but it is strong and light and finishes reasonable without a great deal of trouble. The other woods are also marine grade but have so many different manufatures that Lloyd's will not stamp them. Okoume has only two or three manufactures but they distribute through a variety of wood houses around the world. So Lloyd's has given them the stamp. The Khaya I mentioned is African Mahogany with a darker grain and is a heavier wood but you will get a darker more mahogany looking deck and it is also stamped by Lloyd's. Another thing to consider is no matter what plywood is used on the deck if you finish it right with several coats of clear epoxy before the final top coats are applied the wood will be sealed and therefore waterproofed. The biggest thing we had to watch out for is several of these woods do not get sold with a metric size such as 4mm. You buy it as 1/8 or 1/4 inch thick so be award of what 4mm translates into when you buy English sizes. Hope this helps.

You will need 4 sheets unless you can find a place to get you 5' width- but I would think that unlikely and expensive. I paid 35$ a sheet for the 3mm Okume last time I did a deck. Using 4 sheets leaves a whole stock of leftover odds and ends, so cut those all down and you will have the repair kit of a lifetime. The 4 sheet method leaves a seam down the center of the boat, and one splice on each side right near the chainplates or so. Practice those scarfs!

A real neat finishing bit I have seen done is to lay the deck down, and then using a gate and a router cut a 1.5mm channel right up the seam. Then, laminate in a solid piece of mahogany or WR cedar so you get a nice "stripe" down the centerline of the boat...

My second boat had a perfect looking Okoume deck, well worthy of varnish. She was painted before she ever hit the water, and four years later I sanded off all the paint and finished the deck with varnish for the 1996 Worlds. Pretty.

Have fun! And you might try information to get the # for Yukon-they are in the 757 area code.

West Epoxy. Check their site for some goodies. Also, they have a "use book" that can be bought where WS products are sold. Get a copy. Worth it's weight in gold. It will outline how to fillet, how to make your bog, apply it, seal it, glass it, and finish it.

Combination of what Rick said and what you were hinting at. Definitely fillet. If there is a gap between panels add 406 (collodial sillica) to the mix. Then, directly after you do you fillet tape with 2" tape, so your tape overlaps over the fillet on both sides. Overlap = strength. Be very clean, and use as little resin in the glass as you can and still get it all wetted down... I would not use screws, except to hold things together while you work. Then fill the holes.

Henry is absolutely right but I want to take a sec to clarify some things. Fillet material is a blend of collodial silica and phenolic. you can buy this blend.....I highly recommend it. Second, go light with the resin but not too light. You should easily see through the fiberglass tape but the surface should be with the cloth weave. No puddles of resin but if you go to light on the epoxy you can lose almost all of the fiberglass strength. And oh yeah, I think we can all agree screws add needless weight and actually weaken some joints!

Screws (thru-bolts to be specific) are much better suited for fittings because as we all know, they ALL eventually have to come back off!

Here's my 2 cents worth. First of all, to seal the bare or new wood areas, use West system S-1 sealer or similar that is designed to penetrate the wood, not sit on top of it. Use about 3 coats and then a top coat or 2 of anything (you don't need to worry about UV protection, so any topcoat will do) over that to protect and fill the grain of the wood. You could use varnish, varathane, paint etc. With respect to the painted areas, take a paint scraper to a few areas. If it flakes off easily, then it is not bonded well to the wood and there is probably moisture underneath, or soon will be when you put it back in the water. To repair, remove as much of the loose paint as possible using your method of choice: blowtorch, paint stripper (be careful you don't effect glue lines) scraper, belt sander etc. Then sand smooth down to bare wood Leave wood exposed with heat lamps, or outside on sunny day so that wood is thoroughly dry. Then seal and finish as above. If paint does not peel off with scraper and is well bonded, should be fine so just sand and paint.

Why not go with the best of both worlds. For the tight angle between the tank sides and the bottom panels, it is very difficult to get the glass tape right into the apex of the angle, so I would lay in a light fillet of epoxy and micro fibres right into the joint, and then put some lightweight tape over the fillet. That way, there should be almost no air bubbles at the joint (no strength at all) and the joint will be strong. Use only enough resin with the tape to wet out the fibres, too much epoxy will only add weight to the joint, and no strength.

Traditionally the first rule is to concentrate on seaworthiness, second on speed, third on hardware and layout, and last the cosmetics, but it rarely works out that way! A grinder, lots of sandpaper, Glass cloth, epoxy, fillers and labour will take care of most hull repairs. Go down to Dowsers in Hamilton and get advise on what and how to use. Bring them pictures of problem areas as an aid. Speed through hull fairness, foil (sails, rudder and centreboard) condition and shape. Hardware may be just fine the way it is, however on my son's "in progress" 70's sailcraft project, I am dumping the factory spin bag contraption and using some up to date hardware based on ideas from this web site. For cosmetics, I have given ours a spray with a Wagner Airless spray gun (Home Depot $75-100)and automotive paint. We ended up opening up our centreboard trunk as orig. wood inside had all rotted away. We also had some weak areas in the floor near c.b.trunk.

Give it a try all round with a mastic compound that you can squeeze from a tube. The only other fault where water comes into the foretank ( unless ther is damage to the hull- in which case you can generally peer into the gloom and discern daylight) is when you have a spinnaker chute and then the water comes in around where it goes through the foredeck.

A good way of finding small holes is to drill holes in the hatch covers to attach a pump and then slop soapy water all over the tank in question and observe the bubbles.

No Go? Then examine your wallet.

The delamination you are talking about sound like the plywood deck support members under the deck. Right? If so, it could be indicative of some more serious problems that were the root cause of the delamination (either that, or who ever built it used cheap plywood!) To fix it properly, and to keep the boat looking good, it might be worthwhile pulling the foredeck off completely, and replacing the offending pieces. That way, you could also look for other structural problems inside the forward tank, plus even get a fresh coat of sealing epoxy on the inside of the tanks. Ah, the joys of owning an older, wooden Fireball!

If you can get to the offending member inside the forward compartment, and ensure the gets thoroughly saturated with WEST, a repair will work (as the effect of the epoxy will make the wood significantly stronger.) The problem with delamination is that you may fix the obvious problem area that can be detected visually, but you are not sure how far the problem goes in areas that cannot be inspected. Years ago, I spent a season chasing a delaminating C/B cap, fixing the problem, and then 2 weeks later, fixing another location. I finally bit the bullet and put on a new cap, as I was never going to catch the problem with the fixes. West Epoxy is great, but it has to be given a chance to do it's stuff.

I've done various repairs to my old wood FB. The first method is to fill the crack with slow-setting epoxy, especially if the crack isn't in a high-stress area. An additional step could be to reinforce the inside of the boat above the crack with a rectangle of marine ply, glued down with the same epoxy.