Anonymous wrote:
I believe Teleport has some problems with water intrusion into the plywood core below the WL.....
I built the hull of 6 layers of 1/8" Western Red Cedar with West Epoxy. At the turn of the bilge, it was very difficult to get the veneers to lie flat on the concave shape. I steamed each piece and bent it over my knee in order to get it to stay put when stapled down. Lots of staples. Unfortunately, not all of these pieces stayed put. So you get a lot of tiny voids. I don't think one will find many cold molded hulls out there with concave surfaces. Of course, these voids get water in them. Pathways eventually are found for water to pass through the hull. I don't think it makes a significant difference to the strength. What you have is a girder structure, trusses, not a solid shell. As for rot, the cedar is resistant but not impervious. The boat has lived most of its life in cool to cold water which helps retard rot. One wonders what the winter freeze/thaw cycles have done to the wood. Something should be done.
I came up with the idea to draw out the water using a vacuum bag process, dry the wood by vacuum, locate voids if possible by some means or another, draw in epoxy by vacuum and let set. I ran this by an engineer friend and he said it's called vacuum grouting. He gave as an example, the filling of voids in pre-stressed, steel-reinforced, concrete bridge girders with an epoxy grout. Holes are drilled to inject grout, others for the vacuum to draw it through and out. The challenge is to find and seal leaks.
A similar treatment has been devised for removing uncatalyzsed chemicals in fiberglass hulls suffering from osmosis.
Before pursuing any of these, I would seek out people who have successfully used these methods, for their advice.