Someone's Already Been Here

I had a few hours tonight and decided that instead of grinding bevels in the remaining side deck in preparation for the new core, I would get started cutting out the decks adjacent and aft of the cockpit.  My reasoning is that I just don't think I have it in me to do more than one full shed vacuum before I finish the core job.  So I am going to cut out all the remaining deck area at once and just have one big marathon bevel grinding session and accompanying cleanup.  Then I'll cut and install the rest of the core.

So I broke out the skill saw and vibrating cutter and got started. It's a little tight in the areas adjacent and aft of the cockpit so it was fairly slow going.  The bright side was that having the cockpit to work from and stand up in was much easier than crawling around the foredeck.  I cut out a little less than half the remaining deck before light started to get scarce and pulled up the top skin only to find... plywood.  It dawned on me that the previous owner had told me that he had re-cored some of the aft deck, but I didn't realize the extent that was done.  I haven't gotten to the starboard side yet, but the port side ran all the way aft from the winch pad location.

Mmmmm, old smelly plywood.

Halfway there!

Unfortunately, all of the plywood core was soaking wet and poorly adhered to both the top and bottom skins.  In other words; junk.  It looked like the previous owner had not taken too much care to over-drill deck hardware holes in the stern rail, winch pad and a number of other items.  The result was not good.  Oddly enough, the plywood didn't hold up as well as most of the balsa that was at least 25 years older.

Next up... the starboard side where I expect much the same.  Then onto the dreaded bevel hell.