This is the 1961 Dunphy Explorer - Imperial that I am currently restoring.  The rear seats and all the flooring are missing.  Can you help me find replacements or the correct dimensions and other information I might need to re-create them?

If so, please contact me at bstar@newistech.com

    The above picture is of an Express model.  The Driftwood is an Imperial.  I have noticed that allot of people on the internet mistakenly identify Dunphys by their equipment package.  e.g. Standard, Express, and Imperial.  Of course everyone claims to have the Imperial and they could be right.  The Standard is pretty bare and the Imperials main claim to fame was an integrated light switch on the dash.   (See 1961 brochure page)

    He had also expended significant effort at covering the entire hull with fiberglass matte.  At the time (silly boy that I was) I thought this was a good thing...  How wrong I would prove to be!

    I tolerated the looks of the boat for some time.  In fact I did not use it for several years having too many other things including four children to chase after.  Now, with only the youngest wanting to have anything to do with old dad I find myself with more time on my hands.  Not only that, Zach actually LIKES the boat so last year we got her out again.  It ran fine except for some minor engine trouble that I dealt with but the looks were terrible.  We rode the waves outside the Manitowoc Harbor and chased seagulls and in general had a great old time with her...

    Maybe I am just older and don't tolerate shabbiness as well as I used to but it looked a fright.  The deck varnish was cracked and warped and one windshield glass was broken and the masonite/carpet liner prevented me from even looking below to see if the hull was even still there under all that glass.  When we took her out of the water it would leak from the bow so I knew that water was getting under the wonderful fiberglass job.  (as if the frequent necessity to run the bilge pump didn't tell me something already)  I had heard horror stories about how wood boats had been ruined by this kind of thing so this winter I resolved to "fix her up" before she went in the water again.

    Even as I tore out the remodeling job I could see the hours building.  The sole had been replaced with cheap plywood and screwed to the stringers with drywall screws.  All the original supports were gone except two horseshoe chucks at the stern.  I have an idea of how the floor was laid thanks to Fred Pospeschil who provided these scans from his Dunphy archive project.  But, they don't really give me enough information on how to rebuild them unless I just guess at measurements.

    The fiberglass is another story.  I think two distinct personalities worked on this boat.  I started on the port side and it was tough but I got it off.  The starboard is an entirely different matter.  The guy had used a staple gun to hold the matte to the hull and tuck it in under the strakes to preserve the original look to the boat but the matte he used was so heavy that it did not bond down to the first layer of epoxy very well.  He tried to compensate for the stiffness of the material by stapling it into submission.  The epoxy actually came loose fairly easily with the high heat setting on the heat gun.  But when I hit a staple I would have to use the corner of the wood chisel to hook it out a bit and grab a large pliers and pull it the rest of the way like old bent teeth.  As I was saying, the stapes were only every 4 or 5 inches on the port side.  The starboard had them at least every inch and a half!  It was a miserable job!  I have cursed the warped personality that shot all those staples in many many times and if it works he will spend a long time in the infernal regions!  Not only that, the ones intended to tuck the fabric under the strakes were entirely too long and pierced the hull.  The cracked out 2 to 3 inch slivers on the inside.  I think wiser men would have given up after seeing this but I have never been known to stop throwing good things after bad so I continued.  Now it is nearly all off as far as I can reach under the trailer and the rest will have to wait until I can flip her.

    I have elected to do the inside first.  This has turned out to be a very good choice!  I reasoned that I would have to spend allot of time inside the boat.  I am a good sized guy and I noticed that the boat would tort ion quite a bit when I walked in her while on the trailer.  Even if I had sat her on the ground I believe it would have wiggled significantly and there would have been points of ware on new paint that might have loosened or become marred as a result.

    Also, in applying the stripper I have found that (of course) not all the strakes are tight.  Dunphy used a DuPont resin glue (I suppose this was a form of epoxy) to hold the strakes together minimizing the need for allot of brass screws above the chines seen in allot of clinker woodies.  Over time in the worst areas this "glue" has loosened or the boards have become separated even though they look tight.  (The Dunphy lit states that it will NEVER come apart...  I think I should call DuPont about this...)  I found after doing a section one day that  the stripper had leaked out between the strakes at the first board above the chines and several screws proved to be missing!  Imagine what would have happened if I had done the bottom first and fully painted and finished her????  Ohhhh man, I would have been fit to be tied!  So I provide this as a lesson.   If you are going to strip - DO THE INSIDE FIRST!   If you already painted the outside, get ready to do it again because I don't think there is much you can do about it unless you completely re-sealed each lap with new resin and re-tightened each screw.  This means you also dug out the filler over every screw and re-filled.  I even used a gel type stripper and it went through too.  At least now I know where the leaks are!  I have learned and strongly recommend as a result of this that any boat refurb project be done by completely taking down both the interior and exterior in all cases.  Not just for this reason but as I continue it is obvious that carpentry is going to affect both surfaces as well.

    It has been suggested to me by more than one person that I re-seal any loose laps with a product by 3M known as "5200".  The local hardware store people look at me like I have green teeth when I ask for this.  Can anyone tell me where to locate it?  I have been told to loosen the laps as best I can, and open them somewhat (with a putty knife I suppose) and force a small amount in as evenly as possible.  Then, retightened the screws and begin sanding.

    In preparing the hull for glassing the guy used an automotive type disk sander with really coarse disks.  You can see the swirls plainly.  Oh, boy, this is going to have to be knocked down with a belt sander to at least get the lines going one way and then with a palm sander to smooth them over.  It is going to take allot of paint and subsequent sandings to make it look good.

    Color matching the deck was much easier thanks to Bart Hoekstra from Sheboygan Wi.  Bart is retired now but used to work as a manufacturer's rep for the Volrath Co. of Sheboygan Wi. which made stainless and aluminum accessory parts for boats such as the windows supports for tilt out windshields found in many older boats.  He also was once part owner and plant manager for Span America Boat Co. so he has allot of knowledge about how older boats were built.  He restored a little Dunphy Perch some time ago and discovered that a Pettit Paint Co. product was used to fill the wood grain prior to varnishing.  It is Pettit Light Mahogany Wood Filler.  This works somewhat like a stain but it comes concentrated and you thin it and wipe it on across the grain in order to fill up the "fill" it and give it a very even look to the wood.  I compared the results in test areas to conventional stain and un-stained and it makes a huge difference!  It also tends to even out differences between solid wood parts and plywood.  I have found places that sell Pettit products but no place that sells this one item.  Does anybody know how I can get in touch with them?  The address on the can says Rockaway N.J. but I cant locate them...  The only paint company in Rockaway is Sherwin Williams.  Could they be a sub of S.W.?  Distributors?  Retailers?  I might have enough but would hate to get stuck with a small area undone!

Bolts?  My brass!

    October 26, 1999 - Delay delay delay....  I committed the ultimate sin of a wooden boat restorer!  Adultery!  In July I bought a 1964 Penn Yan Starflite 18 footer with a Mercruiser 4 cyl I.O drive.  It was in fine working condition (after taking her out of mothballs and some minor engine work) and the intervening fun we had big lake fishing and generally just tooling around on the lake and the river and harbor are just too good to relate in the context of this discussion!  This is about the Driftwood Project and that is the way it will stay.  But, the purchase of the Penn Yan had a rather negative impact on the progress for old Driftwood.  I did manage to substantially complete the interior stripping with only some minor detail work and sanding to go.  But today I got back at her in a big way after work and encountered a rather large problem.

    The batten (center stringer) is fastened down by large brass bolts.  Although there were also nails it looks as if they were only used to tack the ribs to the stringers while in the jig to put an initial form to the hull while the bottom boards and laps were applied.  The bolts went clean through the hull and the heads (carriage bolts) were lodged into the keel.  Well, four out of the 6 were snapped off!  I don't know what was holding this old girl together!  I am going to have to drive out the heads and try to find replacements.  I am now worried about the condition of the keel as well.  We will be turning her over this weekend when we rearrange the garage to store the Starflite next to it and make a better work space.

    I guess you really have to consider this a true labor of love!  It certainly isn't going to pay minimum wage!

    I have disassembled the front bench seat.  As I previously related, the seat was pretty much in pieces so it was just a question of taking the screws out...  But as I have pondered how they originally manufactured the parts it was fairly amazing to think they did it without biscuits or dowels to reinforce the joints!  Only two joints are still together and some traces of the glue are visible in the ones that are not.  I re-read the literature and they advertise a DuPont adhesive as being part of the boat's strength and the reason for the lack of machine screws above the water line. I am considering the possibility that the seat was held together by the same adhesive.
    Of course the purist in me says do it the way they did it and don't but the biscuits in...  The pragmatist says do what your experience tells you to do...  What I need is Norm for "New Yankee Workshop" who also wears a "sou'wester"...
    Are there any  adhesive experts out there who can help?????  I guess what I need is an adhesive historian!  Yes, yes... I know, 3M-5200....  I am beginning to think this is like boat restorer's WD-40 (or maybe Spam).  "Here put a little of this crap on it...  It fixed my toilet seat!"  I would like to speak to someone who actually knows!  Maybe 3M or DuPont have a gunk museum somewhere?

The saga continues!

    The Wolfcraft Dowel Pro Kit (retail 24.95) is an interesting gadget.  It works....  If you are waiting for me to rave about it more than that, well you have a long wait.  But, it does work...  The nifty pictures on the box show how easy it is to drill the holes neatly with this tool and the drill you already own.  It is easy to drill the holes.....  That's about all....
    The first disappointment was that the promised depth collars were simply not in the box!  It was late in the evening and I did not want to take it back so I used an old rubber collar I had that did the trick.  I should not have been so easy on them!
    The instructions tell you to use the lower clamps to clamp one of the two pieces you wish to join to the edge of a table.  If your table has a lip  the lower edge you need to get a new table.  After some frustration I found that forgetting the table parts worked better.  just having the two boards clamped together was good enough plus it allowed me to rotate them so I could see what I was doing.  Seeing what you are doing is half the trick with this thing!  The whole reason you are buying the jig is to accurately align two holes to that when you put the boards together the edges even up.  Well, they do a nice job of giving you a way to hold the boards with the double clamps on the hole jig but holding them in the correct position and just holding them are NOT the same thing!
    The first thing you find out is that there are 3 holes.  They are 1/4", 5/16" and 3/8" holes.  They are arranged with the largest in the middle and smallest to the left.  But, more importantly there are no gradations or other means of telling where the clamp is located other than trying to side a mark through the actual hole you want to use!  I carefully measured where the hole needed to be and marked them all off but the ONLY way I could get the jig in the right place was to take the drill bit out of the drill and center its tip onto the mark I had made.  This was made particularly difficult because the mark was deep in the dark recesses of the C clamp area so I had to extend the bit out about an inch and push the jig/clamp toward the board using the bit like a leader line.  Needless to say, this resulted in somewhat less accuracy than I had anticipated!
    This was aggravated by the next step.  The jig comes with a second double clamp shaped much like the one with the jig holes in it to steady the other end of the board.  In order to drill subsequent holes you have to release the jig clamp and reposition it duplicating the same maneuvers previously described.  Keep in mind that BOTH boards are being held in relative position to each other so that when you drill the next pair of holes they are in the same relative position to each other as the first pair.  Whether you accomplish this is totally dependent on the smaller clamp to hold the two boards immobile while you move the jig!
    I have two words to say about this!   IM  and POSSIBLE!

    I aided the process by using another ordinary C clamp with a wood scrap sandwiched between the two boards but I still got less than stellar results...   In each of the three joints on the first backrest I wound up with two types of positional errors in placing the dowels.
    One was in aligning the pins to the edge of the board so that the boards edges matched up.
    The other was in having the pins match up with each other.  However this became less of a problem as my practice with the tool improved.
    To solve the former I had to put the drill in the hole and rock it a bit to give me some play in the dowels so I could shift the boards a bit.  I think this was aggravated by the fact that the seats have curved edges and it was very difficult to determine where the edges lined up when the boards were turned inside out with both joined edges facing me in the double clamps.  I was able to figure out (no thanks to the jig documentation) that the only way to do this is to:
    FIRST:  Decide with a ruler or tape where the pins had to go using one of the boards.
    SECOND:  Mark them off on edge as well as the face of the board.
    THIRD:  Put the boards back together again and using a square, make clear marks at these same positions with both boards in good alignment with each other.
    FOURTH:  Again using a square (a small one works best) mark the edge of the board to have something to aim at when you position the drill bit and jig.  By marking both but joint edges before hand from the side marks developed while the boards were in the right position you can double check both boards with the drill bit probe method before re-clamping each.  I believe that this is why I had better accuracy with the second back rest...

    By using this I was able to get a very precise alignment with the second back rest!  But it was only by my own ingenuity that I was able to pull it off...  I already have an idea for a better jig.  Maybe I can sell it to Wolfcraft???

    I have not attempted the seat yet.  I know from my experience with the backrests that there is now way I can hold the big 1 1/2" X 60+" planks in place to get an accurate tap.  I think in order to do a decent job with this tool you actually need two of them!  Then you would have enough clamping grip to ensure a good hold while you reposition AND you would not need to reposition as much!  Do I really want to buy another one for the remainder of the job?  I am considering doing the scrap and clamp thing again and I have an idea for a C shaped piece of scrap plywood with dowels inserted that I can use to pin the boards in place using the newly drilled holes.  It is too hard to explain....  I will make a drawing or take a picture if I do it...

    The next adventure was the gluing!

    I also found a glue product that may not be the absolute best choice but I was eager to get some things assembled and I took a shot.  Don't laugh!  It is called Gorilla Glue!  OK, dumb name.  But it has some properties that I liked.  It is urethane based so it acts like varnish.  It dries dark and clear.  And, it claims to be "The World's Strongest Glue".  I tested my first joint and it held up to its claims.  The first two pieces of the Driftwood are together!  This stuff has some very strange properties indeed!  It foams as it is curing!  They claim that this aids is "self spreading".  It looks for all the world like the urethane based insulator products you see in aerosol cans when it dries.  Again, as advertised, it scrapes off with a wood chisel when it is dry and sands off completely.  Time will tell how it holds up!

    The actual process of gluing was not quite that easy despite several trial runs without the glue.  The aforementioned trouble with getting the holes right made it a tough thing to get the boards aligned right again and now with the glue in the joints it was really tough to get the boards slid over against each other to the the right edge alignment.  This is very very thick honey like stuff so it does not want to be moved once it is stuck down especially sideways on joints of about two feet or more with dowels in place and the holes packed full of yet more glue I had to use a hammer to tap them in place but it looks pretty good.

    One place where the advertising claims were overly optimistic was the drying time!  I let it sit for almost two hours while I went home to each lunch...  The bottle says 1 to 4 hours.   NOT BLOODY LIKELY!  I came back and wanted to move the piece off the desk to prep the other backrest and SURPRISE!  The clamps fell off and the top board just came off in my hands!  DANG!  I had to re-glue and re-clamp!  I am not touching it until tomorrow like I did with the first joint!  I think 8 to 24 hours is much more like it.  Maybe temp plays a role but it is at least 68 in the shop.

    I am also locating and digging out the last of the broken staples.  They stick out very little so it is tough to grab them.  But, I feel that it has to be done since they are rusty and will only rust more once the wood gets wet again and I dont want the bleeding through the paint!  I know I will never get them all but I have to do the best I can.  Since you can't do it without doing some kind of damage this is the best chance to do it since it is all bare wood.

    I am formulating a plane for re-assembly and I have a couple things that need to be finished first.  The bad ribs that I mentioned earlier still need to have their lower ends replaced so I have to take them out.  I have rough cut an oak 2 X 4 and will now use my dad's jointer to mill them down to size.  I made two 8' pieces of stock so I can cut them down to the lengths that I need.  I also will have to replace a couple pieces of the double rib bottom entirely but those are nearly straight so I dont anticipate having to do any bending.

    I also have 2 to 3 coats of varnish on the front seat and the windshield which look very very good!  Not show room but not bad at all for a 40 year old boat!  Just the odd nick and some differences in the wear on the more exposed faces of the windshield.  You would not think so after all the sanding I did but you can see a difference in the grain and even a slight depression in a face that was exposed to the weather compared to a face that might have been covered by another piece of wood when assembled or the rubber gasket around the bottom!

    All this stuff is just waiting to go back in as soon as the hull is painted and upright!  This is going to be the real challenge of the whole project, I can see that now!  I have come so far and yet there is so much to do and what I do from now on will do more to determine the final result than anything I have done up until now....   Here is the plan...

    There are alot of staple holes and some have minor blackened soft spots around them especially in the bottom boards.  I am going to finish removing the ones that I can find and then intend to use the Minwax Wood Hardener.  Fred told me about one he used that is a two parter but I am going to stick with this.  His might be better but the Minwax product is very easy to use since it does not have to be mixed and can just be capped and put away.  And, it does a nice job of soaking in and stiffening the old wood.  It claims on the label to make a good base for epoxy and it certainly seems to.  We will stick with it...

    Then I need to fill all these holes and decide what to use for a fairing compound on the various gauges.  I will probably go back to the Power Poxy but I am going to try the expoxy based Minwax Wood Filler on the staple and other holes first to see if it might have any advantages.  I am open to suggestions at this point.

    I have to repair the ribs... We know this!  Once I repair them I can refit them and then I perhaps have the biggest challenge staring me right in the face!  It is clear that the screws are loose (the boats not mine - but then again....).  Anyway, I generated quite a discussion about this on the acbs discussion bbs!  The general advice I got was to remove or at least loosen all of them and and retighten them.  This seems to have alot of merrit.  It is clear in testing a section or two that a simple tightening visibly moves the boards.  However I have something else to consider.  There is clearly no longer any functioning adhesive/sealant between the laps!  I can take that paint scraper tool and shove it all the way between the laps with little or no resistance unless there is a screw in the way.  So I need to tuck some in there and I am wondering if I should go through all the grief of complete removing all the screws.  Keep in mind that there are two types of screws below the water line which is where most of the concern is.  There are the wood screws that go into the ribs and there are the countersunk stove bolts (all brass) that hold the laps together.  The problem with the latter is that they have hex nuts on the inside and if I remove them I will have to have help in replacing them because I probably can't hold both ends while I put them back in or I will have a huge job of putting the screws in and then crawling underneath (remember she is on her back) to put the nuts back on.  Not only that I can just see the nasty little things falling on the floor and bouncing all over when I take them out!  I am debating whether to remove them to facilitate the re-sealing (probably with 3M 5200) or to just loosen them and tuck as much as I can in from the outside.  I do not want to put any in from the inside because that gets varnished and then I would have to deal with too much cleanup.

    From there on in it is tighten, sand, fair, sand again, and paint!   OHHhhhhh!  Thats just the OUTside!