1981 SKi Nautique Restoration

I was also able to get the front floor section installed along with all of the floor foam and the air box. I decided to keep the front floor section set back a little way from the hull and fill the void with foam.   

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The next step will be to do some touch up work on the foam and fair the surface.

Just in case you are wondering I did not install wooden ribs between the secondary stringers and the hull.   What you see is a piece of pink closed cell foam that was cut to form a rib in order to help level the top of the pour foam.   

So my driver's seat base needs to be repaired, which should not be a big deal.

The way the seat base was molded it looks like it should have a piece of wood recessed into it and then mounted to the floor.   Can anyone tell me if this is the case.

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I was thinking of fiberglassing another wood pad to the main deck where the driver seat goes so that when I screw it down the screws won't penetrate the main deck. It would increase the seat height a very small amount.   Has anyone done this and do you see any problems with that idea.

Wow! Nice work. Impressive! Thanks for sharing.

The floor and air box are now finished.   I ended up laying down 3 layers of 1708 to get the thickness I was looking for.   I have also started fairing the bilge.   I have the first coat down and have it sanded.   Hopefully I will finish up the fairing this week.



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I'm always impressed with these full scale projects. Admirable work for sure.

Looks awesome. After all that the sanding should seem easy!

Great Job Wisky Badger

Awesome work! keep posting. I used to hate the brown, but over the years it has grown on me to the point that I would keep it.

This is how the boat looked at this time last year.

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This is how it looks a year later.   

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I have started to wet sand the hull with using 600, 800, 1000 wet sandpaper.   I will follow that up with 3M Perfect-It™ Gelcoat Heavy Cutting Compound, 3M Finesse it II and then 3M Perfect-It wax.   

The transom is done.   I started there to test the system and see the results I could get.   The gel coat came back very nice and has a nice luster.   Hope fully the last picture will show the results.   I think it will look a lot better once the colors are painted back on. There is still enough ghosting from the old paint that I should be able to tape off the old design.   

I will post some more pictures once the whole boat is complete.

wow. Nice! A blank canvas..........

Since its fresh and clean finish with Collinite 885

Take a bunch of measurements of what you have before you start cutting them out!!!

Also take a lot of photos that you can reference before you start removing them.   

I do have some blue prints I made for mine on graph paper.   They are not the best but they might help you as reference material. If I can find them I will be happy to share them with you. Send my your email in a PM and I will send them to you as a PDF.     

I dropped the seats and the doghouse off at the upholstery shop a few days ago.   This is the last time we will see the mismatched brown seats.



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Dropping the seats off at the upholster was the first thing I have done to the boat since it was was wet sanded and buffed last fall.    I got busy with hunting seasons last fall and downhill skiing this winter so the boat project was put on the back burner until now.   Hopefully I will be posting a lot of updates in the next few months.   The goal is for the boat to be complete by Memorial Day which is when boating season really starts for me in Wisconsin.   

I am working on some ideas for the speedos tonight and hopefully will have an update tomorrow.

Jacob,
Nice work on the speedos! I like it.