Reusing the old bulkheads - holes doesn't match. What to do?

[dahlke]

First the good news. The plywood for my Ballad interior has arrived. I have two weeks off from work and was planning to test-fit all of the interior.


Then the bad/annoying news. I'm going to paint and reuse the old bulkheads. They seem the be in reasonable condition discounting the worn through outer veneer and I would rather use the money on new sails. I thought it would be an easy job to remount the old bulkheads. Sadly I was mistaken. The holes on the bulkheads are no longer aligned with the holes in the fiberglass What do I do? I would naturally like to use the original holes - it seems like the correct thing to do. How do I get the holes to aligned?

The bulkheads are being held in place by one of the top bolts. None of the other holes align.

[dahlke]

Turns out a car jack and a bit of brute force did the trick The two large bulkheads are now in place and I can get on with test-fitting the interior. It looks like i need to use the jack again with the two forward bulkheads.

My new best friend!

[prjacobs]

I had the same problem, as I faithfully copied the old hole locations to the new bulkheads. Fiddling around with an old bulkhead I noticed the cabin roof had settled abot 30mm so I did what you did: haul out a jack, lift the cabin top (gently) and put a flat piece of plywood under the cabin top, held up with a piece of fence post. After that everything went back in OK.

I see you have your priorites straight: new sails instead of new wood

[Bob McGovern]

We anticipate similar issues with bulkhead alignment. The cabin sole is already showing considerable deformation from resting on its keel. This is normal enough, but it adds to the challenge of fitting bulkheads that will be right when the boat is in the water & that 3500# of lead is hanging down. We have lots of bracing, too. But also lots of tiedowns, which can't be helping.

We may build a fully-supporting cradle or a pair of gantries with slings to unload the keel some while we fit and install new bulkheads. It is my hope when we epoxy these in place (rather than just bolting them to tabbing) and put the weight back on the keel, the hull will sag less.

There's also some evidence our Ballad -- is it safe to give it a name yet? -- that Fionn had a hard grounding and subsequent mediocre repair work around the back of the keel/hull transition. While glassing closed the raw water intake hole, I found more fairing putty back there than you would expect out of the factory.

Thanks for the updates! These are so helpful in planning our own refit.