1989 Sceptre to Center Console

[smilinmatt]

When I bought the boat, I knew it needed a new transom. What started out as a transom recore, turned into gutting it down to the bare hull and stringers and starting over. I didn't post the progress, because I didn't want to be one of those guys with huge ambitions that ends up listing their "90% compete, all the hard work done" boats for sale 12 months later.

I didn't do a good job documenting the rebuild, but I'll try to document what I did start to finish. For now, a couple before and after photos.

(As you can tell, it used to be very tippy...)

[smilinmatt]

For the rebuild, I used Polyumac panels. I bought it all at once from the factory, so they gave me wholesale pricing. I paid less than half what the equivalent Coosa, NidaCore and Divinycell would have cost. It was all built with epoxy and mostly 1708 fiberglass. To see what I used in the following photos, they are:
Gatorboard - grey
15# foam - tan
6# foam - green
honeycomb - white

On the teardown, I was amazed at how little wood was left in the transom. I was able to scoop out more than half the plywood using my hand. It was the consistency of wet shredded wheat.

I replaced the tank and support a couple years earlier, so I left those in place.

I had areas where the stringers were loose and weeping water, so I cut sections out of the tops and removed all the old foam. The stern 3' or so had steel discs in it, so I ended up cutting those sections of the stringers completely out to get rid of it. I pulled about 200# of steel out of the stringers. I glassed the stringers back down and formed new stringer sections with foam. New 2# foam was poured into the stringers and other below deck sections that were going to stay inaccessible.

[smilinmatt]

After foaming and glassing the stringers, I added two inch rigid foam on top of them to raise the floor.

[gofastsandman]

Mmmmmm, Shredded Wheat...

Smithers! Bring me my breakfast spoon.

[strick]

here

[smilinmatt]

These pictures show the building of the forward fish box. I wanted it to drain overboard, which created a huge storage area under the box and in front of the gas tank. The bottom of the tank is 2" foam and the sides and top are 1.5". I made the drain tubes by wrapping 1/2" pvc in saran wrap, and then used epoxy and 6 oz fiberglass cloth to wrap the pvc until it was about 1/4" thick. Then I just pulled the pvc out and cut the tubes into the lengths I needed. I used thickened epoxy to install them to the hull and then sanded it smooth. The fish box is just over 400 quarts.

In front of the fish tank are two storage areas. The larger one holds all the life jackets and an 11 gallon fresh water tank. The smaller one doesn't have a set purpose. It'll probably be used for rope and fender storage.

[smilinmatt]

For the stern, I added a bulkhead in front of the transom and built another fishbox with gullwing style doors (I mostly freedive spearfish, so this makes it easy to swim up on the bracket and throw the fish in the box without getting in the boat. The fish box is 4' long and about 120 quart. It's deeper at the transom and shallower at the bulkhead to allow access to the bilge area through the bulkhead. On one side of the fishbox is storage with a shelf halfway down, so there's a storage accessible from the top and one from the side. The other side doesn't have a shelf, but I still added top and side access.

The original livewell location, I changed to storage. I put a floor on it to keep it above the bilge.

[smilinmatt]

I'll take a break from pictures for a minute, and mention that before, during and after these photos, there's lots of fiberglassing going on. Most of the flat bulkheads and frames, I was able to fiberglass on a table and then install and fiberglass them to the boat. The top of the stern has some camber to it, so I had to fiberglass it in place. For those that don't know, you can fiberglass one side and still have good flexibility, but once the second side is glassed, it becomes extremely rigid.

[smilinmatt]

For the deck of the boat, I used honeycomb which is ridiculously easy to work with (as long as you don't have to finish edges). Since I raised the deck a couple inches, I added hatches to the areas outside the stringers for speargun storage. The two hatches toward the bow are for fuel tank vent and the large storage in front of the fuel tank I mentioned earlier.

In the one picture, you can also see where I've started installing the frames for the cap. Rather than trying to modify the Sceptre cap, I decided to just build my own. More on that later.

[smilinmatt]

To build the cap, I clamped a sheet of foam to the bow, and traced out the shape of the bow piece. After I cut that piece out, I clamped it in place and worked down the sides using the same technique. I fiberglassed the undersides of each piece outside the boat. I then installed them and taped the underside of the joints together. This step had lots of vertical and upside-down glassing (gunnel to hull joint), which is not fun.

With the top installed, I built a 6" deep inwale using the same technique. At the bow, I took the inwale deeper to create cubbies which makes a good storage spot for shoes, towels, clothes, etc.