Removal of wooden rubbing strake

[Graham W]

For various reasons I need to remove the wooden rubbing strake from each side of my GRP BR20.  This appears to be attached by screws directly into the hull, with wooden plugs then covering over the screw hole, as in the attached.  There are quite a lot of them.

Any suggestions for carefully removing the plugs without destroying the rest of the rubbing strake?  I suspect that they are secured in place with strong wood glue.

[garethrow]

The plugs may even be epoxied in Graham (though I can't open your image).

I regret I am devoid of helpful ideas of how to remove the plugs without incurring damage to the surround. I think I would try asking the yard as it must be something they have had to do. Once you get the screws out I suspect the strake will be stuck to the hull with bostick marine adhesive - which is pretty strong. The only way I have found of breaking that is to "saw" through the glue with cheese wire. The wire gets very hot and doesn't last long, so you need quite a few spare lengths.

Regards

Gareth Rowlands
GRP BR20 Halen Y Mor

[Graham W]

Thanks Gareth.  I fear that you may be right.  I've changed the photo which hopefully is now visible.

[garethrow]

Yep - can see that now Graham. Are you sure there isn't a way of achieving whatever it is you want to do without removing the rubbing strake??

I wonder if it is possible to buy a smallish diameter hole saw without a central drill bit? If so - you could try cutting a hole around the plug of similar diameter to a depth of say 5mm to start with and then use a small chisel to remove?

Regards

Gareth Rowlands
GRP BR20 Halen Y Mor

[Charles Scott]

Graham, I replaced my rubbing strakes last winter, as parts of them were cracked, damaged and even rotten, due to misuse of the boat by Plymouth university before I bought her.  It was quite a job, and i was not trying to preserve the strakes. I think it unlikely that you would be able to do that, and will have to resort to replacing them entirely as I did.  You will find that the screws are not what are holding on the strakes, that job being done entirely by the Bostik, which cannot be removed except by mechanical means - I liked the idea of sawing with wire, but found it got very hot, kept breaking, and anyway took so long that I thought it unlikely that I would get the job done in my lifetime.  I sharpened the end of a wide wallpaper stripping knife, and "chiselled" the strakes off. I then replaced them with expensive iroko, but made the mistake of using too short splices ( I could only get 8ft lengths ) and two of them have sprung apart a little.  Next job  will have to be to dribble some thin epoxy into the joints and clamp them up.  However, the boat looks much better than before,
    Maybe you only want to clean up your strakes, in which case I heartily recommend you leave them on the boat, do the job carefully to protect your topsides, and save so much time that you can watch all series of Slow Horses

[Graham W]

Thanks both.  I had already feared that I would have to sacrifice the existing rubbing strakes for the greater good, as I would almost certainly damage them whatever I needed to do to remove them.  And maybe also inflict mechanical damage to the hull on removal.

I don't think that finding suitable Sapele slats (with a bit of bandsawing and routing) to replace them would be such a problem but successfully re-installing them might be.

Back to the drawing board.