Strippers, Getting Head Action, Hot Nuts.

I started on stripping the combing around the cockpit yesterday so that I can sand it back and then oil and varnish it. I bought a copy of "Brightwork" which is a book singularly and obsessively devoted to topic of varnishing boats. I'm fairly sure the author must suffer from some kind of obsessive disorder, or at least have some kind of profileable psychological traits to have produced it. Either way -- it seems like a great book if you're interested in varnishing your boat.

The book strongly recommends stripping old varnish using a heat gun and a scrapper over sanding or chemicals. I started on this and progress was been surprisingly fast. However, scraping works best if the scrapper runs with the grain. Scraping around the grain lifts small splinters out of the grain that require removing more wood when sanding. Scraping around the hardware on the combing is a little problematic because of this. Since I'm taking off the old varnish I decided to take up all of the hardware on the combing (four winches and two compasses) and redo underneath these also. While the winches are removed, I can also do their annual service. I hoped that removing the hardware would make the varnishing job go quicker. However, as I removed one of my primary winches, I found it had been bedded down with some seriously heavy duty adhesive. In particular, the through-bolt threads were covered in the stuff and it took me all of Sunday to remove two of the four winches.

My big problem was that my heavy duty screwdriver (the biggest available) just didn't cut the mustard. In fact, trips to OSH, Home Depot and research on the Internet revealed that they don't even make screwdrivers large enough to properly fit the screws I have. The biggest I found (a #12) has a lot of wiggle room -- almost certain to lead to striping the screw head. My deck key fit the screw head perfectly but bent when I tried to use it. My crowbar also fit the screw's slot but was too long to fit into the recesses containing the screw heads.

It strikes me that screwdrivers are very poorly designed. Its impossible to get significant torque due to the relatively small diameters of screwdriver handles. A large lever arm is called for. A socket wrench would be perfect, but again, the small size bits available lead to stripping large screws. I tried making a lever arm for my screwdriver with my tapping tool -- my screwdriver was too bif. I taped silicone mats from the galley around the handle to increase its diameter. On top of that I added a towel and a tourniquet wrench (a rubber strip that wraps around objects and passes back through a handle to provide a lever). This helped a little but not enough. I tried "Liquid Wrench" to loosen then screws. This helped a little. I tried heating the bolt with my heat gun to melt the goop it is stuck in. No effect.

By around 6:30, by standing directly above the screws and applying all of my weight and twisting screwdriver's enlarged handle, I'd managed to remove four of the six bolts; one of remaining ones had budged by about 10 degrees and the other remained fixed. Worse, the heads of these were beginning to get severely striped, and my hands were both blistered and cramping up from sweating all day in the sun all day and so tightly gripping the screwdriver handle. I researched screw extractor tools. These seem to be last resort measures that often make matter worse by breaking themselves off in the screw. Maybe I'd have better luck from below.

I crawled back into the lazarette and tried bashing the bolts with a hammer in the vain hope of knocking something loose. No joy. I filed down two sides of a bolt's thread so that my monkey wrench could get purchase. This let me eke out an extra sixty degrees but further progress was halted by inside of the lazarette which blocked the wrench's handle. Without about two inches of thread exposed and probably 12 threads per inch, I calculated I would have to remove and reattach the monkey wrench 144 times to turn the bolt out from below. Not that it made any difference -- without being able to twist it ninety degrees, the bolt's new position didn't provide an access to file down more edges for the wrench.

If only there was some way of turning the bolt from below, I wouldn't have to worry about stripping the bolt's head. Think, think, think...

At around 7pm (I'd been working on this since midday) the answer hit me. I could could put a cap nut on the end of the bolt and tighten it. Because the cap is blocked by the end of the bolt, it can't twist up it and so turning the nut will torque the bolt. The long lever arm of my socket wrench would surely twist the bolt free.

If only I had a 3/8 cap nut. I checked my box o' bolts. I didn't. Rats.

I went scrounging for parts from the other boaters. The guy in the slip opposite had a really bright idea - put two nuts on the end of the bolt. The first nut stops the second from traveling up bolt and together they work like the a cap nut. A third nut in my the socket of my wrench stopped the sleeve of the socket reaching as far as the first nut and turning it. Brilliant!

Within about 5 minutes, I had the winch base all removed. When the last nut came out I was burning hot from friction.

Cool beer soothed my hot hands. Satisfaction? Not exactly. Tired and frustrated. Damn this boat. Every time I try to do something right for it, I end up bloodied and sweating.