Repairs

We have not done any posts for a few days.  We still have a few to get caught up on but we thought we would share what we have been doing for the past week.  The pictures may have to wait until tomorrow or the next day as our somewhat faster internet window is only open for a couple of hours in the morning and closes at about 7 am.  Seeing it is 7:15 we are kind of pushing it.  Anyway we had some dry rot in the port side wall of the coach roof.  This also meant we had some leaks during heavy rain.  It was something we discovered just before we left Guam. We repaired a small section there and bought some extra materials in case that didn't work.  Well it didn't and so now the time came to bite the bullet and get after it.

What a job!  We had to take off all the trim and then start gouging with chisels until we hit hard wood.  Then get the grinder out and fair the good wood so we could fill with epoxy for the repairs.  Mostly we found the leaks came from screw holes that came from outside.  This meant pulling out or cutting the screws off then using some underwater epoxy to patch the area where the screws were.  These were leftovers from when they rebuilt the deck 26 years ago.  So though Mark cursed them for not removing them at the time of that repair he gave them credit that it didn't become a problem for 25 years!  We have this problem only on the port side.  Not sure if this is a preview to having to do something similar on the starboard side or not. Hope not because at least the port side is open enough to work around.  The starboard side has cabinets etc.

One of the hardest to do was replace a section of the beam that had rotted.  Mark cleared the bad section out until he reached a scarf then went forward to good wood made another scarf on that piece and then found a board and shaped to fit.  All this with chisels and a Japanese pull saw and upside down!

Anyway it is almost all back together.  We ran out of glass and epoxy resin, so it is off to the home center today with a trusted Japanese interpreter to get some more glass, epoxy, and paint. Hopefully three more days and we can begin fitting the the headliner which will cover up the entire repair anyway.

I rotated these pictures but they went back to original.  Anyway gives some idea of how working upside down was.
This one and the next one partially show the beam I cut out

This was the deepest hole.  We went all the way through to the outer glass

Starting the repairs

More Filling

The Replacement Beam