Projects
Wooden Sunfish Restoration
Where we found it
We were driving around looking for a good place to fly our camera kite when we saw this boat on a trailer on
the side of the road with a FREE sign on it. We stopped to check it out and were surprised to find it looked just
like the Fiberglas Sunfish we sailed years before, this was a wooden Sunfish. The paint was in poor shape, a
section of the gunwale was so rotten it broke away easily and the tires on the trailer were flat. However all the
parts were there and the sail was in great condition. Being unable to turn down such a project we knocked on
the door and asked the owners to hold the old Sunfish until we could return the next day to tow it away. The
fellow at the house said it was Sunfish kit, they were popular in the late 60's and early 70's. He said he bought
the boat from the man who made the boat in 1974.
We were driving around looking for a good place to fly our camera kite when we saw this boat on a trailer on
the side of the road with a FREE sign on it. We stopped to check it out and were surprised to find it looked just
like the Fiberglas Sunfish we sailed years before, this was a wooden Sunfish. The paint was in poor shape, a
section of the gunwale was so rotten it broke away easily and the tires on the trailer were flat. However all the
parts were there and the sail was in great condition. Being unable to turn down such a project we knocked on
the door and asked the owners to hold the old Sunfish until we could return the next day to tow it away. The
fellow at the house said it was Sunfish kit, they were popular in the late 60's and early 70's. He said he bought
the boat from the man who made the boat in 1974.
| Restoration The first order of business was to smooth the surfaces of the boat and repair the damaged gunwale. The missing section of the gunwale was sectioned out at an angle to allow the replacement section to apply a load against the remaining good section. The replacement section was cut to length, but the shaping was left until installation was completed. The replacement section was Gorilla Glued and screwed into place. The replacement section was then shaped with a straight blade hand plane. The gaps were filled and the screw heads filled. You can tell the section was replace if you get the light in the right spot, but you can lift the boat from the replacement section, so it is plenty strong. |
| Bronze You can see from the photos of the bronze in the pictures at the top of the page the bronze was all very tarnished. The surface of the cast bronze parts is not smooth enough to give a nice shine, but they certainly could look better. I tried hand polishing and decided there had to be a better way. I ended up making a homemade polishing machine using an old treadmill and a large plastic pretzel jar with crushed limestone as the media. I let the parts tumble every night while I was working on the boat. The tumbling did 95% of the polishing, that saved me a lot of work. I didn't tumble the treaded parts figuring the threads would be damaged. I put duct tape around the thread, chucked them in my drill and polished the face. |
| Dagger board and Rudder The dagger board and rudder were simply sanded and refinished with polyurethane. They came out real nice. |
| Resurfacing and painting The boat was sanded until it was 95% paint-free with a buzz sander. The top surface of the boat had very tiny splits in the surface that looked to be caused by exposure to the elements. All the tiny cracks were filled along with dings from years of sailing. The boat was sanded flat and painted. Funny color! I wanted to paint the boat white on the bottom and hunter green on the top to look like I think the boat looked when it was fabricated. Since the boat will removed from the water after each use and not be moored, I decided exterior paint would fit the bill. I bought a gallon of white exterior paint and finished painting the bottom. I carefully measured out one quart and put it back in the original paint can, keeping the rest in another container. I returned to see my friend at the paint counter, I explained that I wanted the green added to make the hunter green with the remainder of the paint. He mixed in the other colors and he could not get the hunter green color to come out right. He added more and more of the components, but the color didn't come out right. Then he realized the problem, when you buy a quart of paint to mix with other colors you don't get a quart of white. The can would be partially filled, leaving room for the other colors. Since I careful measured out exactly one quart of white the recipe was off. I chose to paint the boat the color we had concocted, while it is not my favorite color it will be OK. I can always buy another quart of Hunter paint and go over the paint I have. |
| Finished! This boat was finished, but trailer lights were not completed in time to sail this season. . I'm thrilled to have a treasure like this wooden sailboat. I'm looking forward to the first voyage. I hope it floats |
