Its always something isn’t it?

We caulked all our seams with regular caulking cotton; done with it…except…there are two places along the rabbets that we were advised (by a more knowledgeable fellow than us regarding caulking) to place a strand of oakum over the cotton–or to use 3M 5200 (eek! no, no, no–so “non-traditional”).

Both of these spots (port side stem knee area and port side deadwood area) were of concern to our “adviser” friend because he though the swelling of the oak stem and deadwood rabbets would push out the cotton.

On the stem knee, there’s a 15″ length of seam where the fit of the plank was such that we had 1/4″ or so of the backing rabbet showing instead of the outgage tightening down in the back to nothing showing like everywhere else. So, little actually holding tha cotton in there with such a wide seam. I’m also a bit concerned about this area and considered epoxy-ing a spline along the plank to make a better outgage but was advised to simply use a strand of oakum to “catch” on the sides better than the cotton will. The plank is 1-3/8″thick so there’s plenty of depth, I suppose to do this.

Regarding the port side deadwood area that the adviser is concerned about, I’m not concerned nor understanding his concern–but trust that he knows what he’s talking about. It is a very, very deep rabbet, tight and good outgage, which should close up nicely locking in the cotton as the planking and the oak deadwood swell. He seemed more freaked out by the very deepness of the rabbet. Same 1-3/8″ depth, but just allowed a bare 00 caulking iron to go back in about 1-1/8″ wereas most of our seams were so tight that the 00 caulking iron could only go in between the planks anywhere from 1/4″ to 3/4″, most being about 1/2″

Well, anyway, the adviser friend said he didn’t have any Oakum but we should top the cotton with oakum and he’d know who to come to when he needed oakum since we’d have plenty extra! Well, I can’t find small quantities of the sort of oakum that is used for caulking wood boats. I can get the kind that you use in plumbing–but it has benonite (spelling?) added to make it swell (advertised 10x) and specifically doesn’t have “tar”…the bit of reading on oakum I’ve done indicates that one wishes to use tarred oakum when caulking or just “oakum” but not something made to swell like a balloon! Our local expert/adviser cannot help with this issue. He doesn’t know if there’s a difference or not between plumbing oakum with benonite and regular oakum for caulking.

I’d read somewhere a little story about a fellow who needed oakum in a pinch and unwound some marlin (tarred hemp) that he had (using a drill to unwind) and I thought…hey…that’s not too bad…So, I bought a little bit of tarred marlin from Jamestown Distributors. It showed up…its Polyester!!! not hemp. I called them and asked for a refund. They were gracious and gave it and said they’d update their website to stick the word polyester in the description. Everything is a “fake” something these days it seems.

Still looking for that plain old oakum in small quantity. I noted that the (large quantities) that Jamestown Distributors sells is the “expanding” type with Benenite (or however you spell it!).

I noted that American Rope and Tar does have REAL marlin, so I guess I can try that route again.
Before buying it, I made a post on the wooden boat forum–hopefully one of the helpful folks there can advise me where to find plain oakum or what the difference really is between plumbing oakum and caulking oakum.

The caulking of the hull is finally nearing completion. We are getting our second wind as we approach the 1/2 mile point. The caulking of the hull was really blazing along at the 1/4 mile point, but not without incident. At one point, there was a delay of a couple of hours to make a new mallet to replace the smoking one. Yes, I was in the groove and laying in the caulk fast and furious on Mahdee’s starboard aft quarter. I was getting an occasional whiff of burning electrical.

John was sanding the rub rail on Mahdee’s port side, so I figured he was pushing his poor heavily tasked sander. John vigorously denied any such tool abuse. Then Brenda who was caulking near the starboard bow, nearly 50 feet away, asked what was burning. I joking said it must be the big floor fan that we had put in Mahdee to keep Ryder from being overcome by Smiths CPES epoxy fumes inside the boat (which was pretty well sealed up to protect the inside from all the sawdust being generated by John’s poor sander).

As you can see, everything on this project is highly interconnected even if not well coordinated. Ryder wasn’t working that day, so Brenda was shocked that that old fan might be on because she didn’t trust it. I told her that I found the fan stopped but turned on the day before, so I unplugged it–with the immediate effect that I could hear all the power tools in the ship yard speed up a notch. That was more than slightly disconcerting, so I also really hoped that it was still unplugged.

Brenda decided to go investigate (so easily called away…any excuse to stop caulking). She let me know that it was still unplugged, but as she spoke, she noticed that the burning electrical smell was really strong where I was working. I jokingly told her that I was caulking so fast my mallet was overheating. She, either missing the joke or deciding to play along, asked me for the mallet. “The mallet is the source of the smell,” she exclaimed.

The mallet was wooden, but built up with phenolic resin. The constant tap-tapping was causing the resin to turn to powder. i decided that if I wanted to avoid an ugly immune reaction to the phenolic resin dust, I either needed to wear a mask while caulking or make another mallet. This was all the motivation I needed (so easily called away…any excuse to stop caulking) to give the old mallet back to John, its rightful owner and start searching the ground around the band saw for a suitable chunk of oak. There was some bronze pipe of just the right size and within two hours, I had the perfect caulking mallet for me.

I have put many hundreds of feet of caulking in with my new mallet and it is holding up great–better than me for sure, but that may not be saying much.