Chinking and battening

This morning we ground down the edges of the new floor, cleaned things up a bit, and Jim began chinking the seams. For most of it he used seven-strand caulking wick, which is basically a bunch of string. 

For the wider seams he used caulking cotton, which is more fun to watch. We even made a little movie of it.

Meanwhile I sawed and routed about 120 feet of white oak battens. Once Jim finished chinking we oiled the bottom and all the seams, then caulked them with Sikaflex and laid a stripe of masking tape over each bead of caulk so the battens would not adhere to the boat. (I like to be able to take the boats apart with too much trauma.) Here is Julius about half-way through that process. The two new floorboards stand out pretty good. But by pushing all the original floorboards farther toward the outside edges of the boat we were able to remove nearly all the fatigued wood.

And finally with all the battens in place and oiled. That bright new wood won't be bright very long.