Cabin Sole

[TBeyer]

Our boat a PY26 77was purchased with a wet core in the cabin sole. In the fall I drilled a whole bunch of holes in it to dry it out over winter. My plan is to mill mahogany flooring for it. 2" x 3/8 and bond to floor after holes are filled and floor is level and stablized. Additionally I am thinking of biscuiting the boards together also. Question is what is best adhesive to use? Should I use west epoxy or a flexible adhesive? I will only being doing the flat areas of the floor not the curve sections. Floor area is pretty small max 30sq ft
Thanks Ted

[The Good Goose]

Ted
A neat way to do this is to bed the strips in thickend epoxy and use sheetrock screws with a washer on them inbetween the joints to space and hold the boards down. after the epoxy sets take out the screws and tape and caulk the joints. It will look like a teak deck. I would be leery of butting everything up tight unless there was some room on the sides for expansion.

Brock

[windrose]

Goose, great idea.... I am going to try it with some black silicone caulk... Silflex (or something like that), any thoughts? Thanks. Ang

[Tim]

The best choice for this is black polysulfide caulk. Lifecaulk (polysulfide) has a black color that works well.

[Capn_Tom]

Check out he fitting epoxy and seam caulk available from Teak Decking Systems teakdecking.com . I'm using their products for my deck. They are always willing to answer questions over the phone and when you purchase direct the prices are reasonable. For the interior though If you want that look you might consider epoxy thickened with graphite for the seams.

[CharlieJ]

Epoxy /Graphite is what I used aboard my tri when I built it. Teaks strips epoxied to a ply base, held in place with screws between the strips. Then taped off, the seams payed with a thick epoxy/graphite mix. When it cured, removed the tape and sanded the entire sole area. Looked great, felt good under foot and was reasonably nonslip, cause we kept it oiled NOT varnished. Had a horrible experience with a varnished sole once- never again will I have varnish there unless it has nonskid in it.

[dkall]

My varnished cabin sole is mor NON-skid than my non skid deck. I used Ultamate Sole varnish. Socks or shoes or bare feet and you won't slide even an inch.

[CharlieJ]

lol- yeah Dave- wish I'd seen that stuff. Course I don't know that it was even available back then. But that's a good idea.

On mine, I had regular varnish. I was in the St Johms river, the tri was on auto pilot, full sail up and I popped below to check a chart. Busted my ass full length on the cabin sole, just missing the step with my head. As I was down there, flat on my back staring at the overhead it occurred to me that the boat would have continued on until it hit something had I actually cold cocked myself. Scared the S**T outta me and the next day I pulled the floor boards, stripped the nice shiny varnish and oiled them instead.