Nada Bear was built using iron fastenings. Looking at he pictures it is easy to see rust running down the hull.

To stabilize the boat, the fasteners had to be replaced. Iron bleeding dissolves the Lignum in the wood and discolors the fibers. The extra porosity and the wet marine environment leads to wood decay around the screw hole.

My approach was:

• Remove what was left of the screws.
• Treat the wood with Smith & Co. Clear Penetrating Epoxy Sealer.
• Fill the hole with wood dowel using Gorilla Glue.
• Fill the top of the hole with Smith & Co. Fill-It.
• Drill a new tapered counter sunk hole.
• Insert screw and tighten.
• Bung the hole.
• Trim flush, sand and paint.

I would sand the paint off of three frames of fasteners. Pull the bungs off, remove the screws, treat with CPES. While the CPES was drying, I would start on the next three.

Once I got the fasteners out of the next three, I would dowel the previous three.

After dowling the first three I filled the hole with Fill-It, dowel the next three, then start removing the next three frames.

The next time I would Drill, Screw and Bung the first three frames, Dowel  and fill the second set of three, Cpes the third set, and start removal of the next set.

Working this incremental way instead of doing each step to the entire side of the boat, kept the planking from falling off the frames. 

I figure I replaced about 1250 screws using this method during the 2013 and 2014 years.

Here is a video of me removing the dead screws using the UnScrewUms.

Now for the photo gallery. Click on ther picture for the caption.