DB restoration - inside rails and oarlocks

[GutZ]

I am going to have to replace both inner and outer rails on my 18'. I am thinking about using that extruded plastic stuff they are using for decking. What material are you using for your replacement rail? Do you have bothe inner and outer rails? Why not replace both at the same time?

I would think if you sat in the boat and had some "be" the oarlock you could find the sweet spot for the oarlock holder. Perhaps two positions? One in case you row from the front
seat or just an emergency backup set in case one busts up. I think mine are located strait out from where my arms are fully extended. I know that when I ship the oars I lean on them and they are on my knees.

Good luck with your project. Eastside's are fantastic boats. I bet mine is older than alot of Ifishers , 1970 or so.



Dang, Take a look through some of these

Fishing and Beer .com GutZ and Friends website.

[ 01-27-2004, 01:45 PM: Message edited by: GutZ ]

[ampersat]

Mine's an early 70's model. The original ash rails were rotting pretty badly so I'm replacing them with white oak.

More pics of the restoration project are available on my website .

[Woody]

I have always started on the bow (pointy) and worked my way back to the stern (not pointy). It's gonna take some fooling around though. It's not a one shot deal, unless your really lucky. Cut the board longer than you think you will need. Make sure the bow end fits nice against the stem. Then you will have to spring the board into place, clamping to the frames along the way. Mark the length and the angle on the stern end. Remove the board and cut to your mark. If you want a really sweet joint, cut it a hair long and sand or file it until it fits just right.

[Steelheader69]

I'm about to start a complete restore on my Eastside. Luckily, Hull is in excellent shape. Just need to refinish the gunnels (wood is weathered, but not damaged), and I'm going to repaint the inside (has green and burnt yellow interior).

How big is your boat? 16x48??? If it is, will tape mine and give you exact measurements from tip of bow to the holes on gunnel. Let me know.

[Buck50]

It's the stern if you hang a kicker on it. I do, no arguments! :grin:

[ampersat]

Hey Steelheader69: yep 16x48. If you could just give me a measurement to the oarlock from the rowers seat, that would be great. Whatever method you come up with for making the measurement is fine, just tell me how you did it so I can replicate it.

The rest of the rail spacers are going to be mounted evenly between the front wedge, oarlock block and rear block. I wrapped the top edge of the hull with fiberglass as part of the restoration so all of the previous holes are now sealed up. I've got eight spacers for each side which is a few more than were originally used on my boat.

[Steelheader69]

Hey, I had a question for you. Were you able to get replacement stickers for your boat? Like the one on link for your boat restoration??? I wanted to get some to put on mine. Like I said, I lucked out, have to do no restoration to outterhull. Perfectly straight and crack free. But, will be doing the sanddown, repaint on the inside though.

Here's how I'm going to do the measurements. I'm going to trace along the top edge of gunnel until I get right over where my first hole is for the oar lock. That way you can just go straight down with your pilot hole however far is needed to mount your oar tower. I was curious, is yours made out of wood? I lucked out and got one with an aluminum block, instead of the wooden ones normally seen. A definite blessing.

[Steelheader69]

Duplicate post.

[ 01-27-2004, 06:23 PM: Message edited by: Steelheader69 ]

[Steelheader69]

Ok, I measured at the VERY tip of the bow, on top. Then followed my Tape along the top of glass where the wood attaches. The dead center of your oar tower (I mean the hole where your oarlock goes into) is where my measurement ends. So bow to centerline of oarlock hole is 115 1/2". Hope that helps.

[ampersat]

The eastsider restoration continues. I still have some stuff to wrap up but the next major step is to mount the inside rails, which includes mounting the oarlocks. This weekend's weather actually looks promising for playing with the required power tools out in the yard.

Question 1: How far ahead of the rower's seat are your oarlocks mounted? Since I covered over the old holes with fiberglass and painted over it, I don't know where it was mounted before.

Question 2: Any tips on how to best negotiate mounting the inside rails? My plan was to start at the pointy end of the boat and work my way to the square end (stupid bow/stern debate - can't we all agree that the end that the anchor hangs off of is the stern of the boat?).

[BW]

What if there is an anchor at both ends? :grin:

[ampersat]

I priced a bunch of places and the best deal I could find was at Fastsigns. The gal there said she'd make me a deal that worked out to about $8 per decal. So for $24 I'd have one for each side of the boat and one for the back of my rig. (You did notice that the decals are different on each side of the boat, didn't you? It wasn't until I started taking pics prior to removing them that I discovered this.) The eastsider mold ended up over at Yellowstone drifter and they still use a modified version of the decal but don't have any of the originals.

The oar towers on my boat were actually chunks of good ol' 2x4 by the time I bought it. The new ones are white oak with PVC sleeves. I put two sockets in the new towers. The primary is going to be lined up as original and the secondary will be forward from that.

[ampersat]

PS: thanks for the info! With any luck, I should be able to get the inside rails installed this weekend and be minimally ready to float after that. I still need to rerope the seats, mount the rod holders (gonna be hard to put holes in that pretty white oak for the rod holders but you gotta do it, right?) and setup the transom for the Dierk's anchor pulley. Still have to go over the scans of the decals, clean 'em up and get 'em printed too. One of these days I'll paint the bottom of the boat (it's still scratched up blue).

[James in Idaho]

Great website. I'm over to pick up my wood rapid robert this weekend, hopefully it will start to warm up here in Idaho (like above freezing!), but I have lots of heat gun and scraper work first. I have to use epoxy, I'm curious why you didn't go with the poly glass stuff, I doubt that epoxy was used when your hull was laid up. It's LOTS less expensive than epoxy, but also more dangerous to work with.

[Hoosier Daddy]

I think having some adjustment built into your oarlocks, either by having a long block with several holes for the yoke, multiple blocks with single holes, or some kind of sliding contraption, would be cool. Then you could shift around a little. Of course, I'm not a rower, so......

[Paddlefish]

My perspective is more that of a going forward (canoe) experience than a going backwards (rowing) history, but I've done both.

First of all, thanks to Woody for redefining, finally, the "bow" and "stern" of drift boats: "pointy" and "not pointy." [img]graemlins/applause.gif[/img]

I'm assuming that you'll be adding fasteners at each "block" (spacer?.)

More and shorter blocks will give you more fasteners and a relatively more flexible hull.

Fewer and longer blocks should give you a stiffer hull at the gunwale (important, since that's where your horsepower is being generated and transferred to the rest of the boat.)

One question not asked is, "How tall are you?" A 5'4" guy might not like the same oar position as a 6'4" rower.

GutZ might have had the best answer with, "Why not a couple of positions?"

[Steelheader69]

Hey, is there anyway I can get a copy of your eastside logo. Actually, the logos were gone off my boat. Only way I knew it was an eastside was 1. the boat of course, can't miss an eastside 2. the placard on motormount that says "Eastside". I only had the one on your page I downloaded. But if I could get both from you would be appreciated. I know a signmaker that hopefully will do for me if I get him the pics (he does the clean line stickers like you see from Gloomis that say "Fear no fish" with the skeleton, but his are very sturdy and aren't cheap). I'm same as you, want to get a few. 2 for the boat, then some for my rig. If you could email me those, that would be much appreciated.

[Steelheader69]

Oh yeah, here's pics of my boat. Actually, still pretty much looks like this. I'm in process of cleaning it up, the stripping off the molding (only to resand since they are just weathered, not rotted). Have collected the anchor system for it, and am going to replace the front anchor mount with a new Diercks mount. Will have a sidemount release by Deircks as well. But this is what mine looks like now. These pictures are from when I first brought her home.



If you look, you can see it has an aluminum oar tower. Was suprised to see that. Alot better then the wood ones. And that's not the standard trailer, that is my cataraft trailer (converted DB trailer). I put it on there so I could restore the trailer it came with. It's an old EZloader DB trailer. Really nice, but has some rust, so plan to sand that down first and repaint. Then will transfer DB back onto it and start the inside of boat.

[ 01-28-2004, 10:04 AM: Message edited by: Steelheader69 ]

[ampersat]

I still need to go through and clean up my images. The decals were cracked and fading and had some spots on them. Thankfully they came off in one piece so I had them scanned on a flatbed at the highest resolution I could get. The lady at Fastsigns said they wanted the files in eps format. Let me know what format your buddy wants and I'll do 'em in that format. For the sake of getting the best possible end result, I plan to move the file to the desired format, then do the cleanup work on the images. I'd be happy to make the files available to anyone who wants them. Depending on the cost, I might ask your buddy to do my decals too. I'd rather spend more upfront for quality, durable product.

By the way, I'm about 5'7" and to hit the foot braces on mine I have to scoot about halfway up the seat. That's what got me started on having a second set of oarlock sockets further up. The oars were hitting me in the chest when I rowed.

Your boat is a dead ringer for mine right down to the placement of the plaquard on the transom. Mine was only a CG plate and didn't include a hull ID so I have to take it to the CG guys for them to look at before Oregon will issue me numbers for it. Can you snap a pic of the rower's footblocks on the floor? I'm curious to see if they're the same as mine. I'm thinking of trying to rig something off of the seat for the foot brace since putting pressure on the floor makes it trampoline and make a lot of noise. I'm going to prototype some stuff this winter and will report back on how well it works.

[10 more minutes]

Hi, How about oar lock blocks with multiple holes, like a 10" long block W/ 3 holes so you can move the oar locks as needed?

[GutZ]

Amp! Hold the Drill!

A friend of mine made mounts of 1/4 inch steel. There is a front and a back. To the front is mounted a fish on holder with the bottom holes threaded. There are four mounting holes that go through both the front and back. The top mounting holes also go through the top of the fish on. As the bottom holes of the fish on would normally go through the rail, these are only as deep as the steel. The whole thing is held on with wing nuts. So there are no holes in the rail. You can easily move these mounts anywhere on the rail you like. This is really great for me as with the motorwell I am facing the opposite direction when trolling. Just loosen/remove two wingnuts and move the whole rig.

I am interested in getting a set of the Eastside Decals. I took mine off with Acetone when I repainted (is that the right word for that two part stuff?) the outside.

Please let me know when/if they become available.

As to a foot board, mine is a simple rig of gas piping mounted on marine plywood. It fits into the Stringers (which your boats do not appear to have) on the side. The Plywood adds a lot of stability to the boat.

[ampersat]

Hey Gutz: got any pics of the rod holder mounts? I was thinking of making something that clamps on so that I can move them as needed and wouldn't have to put holes through my precious rails.

Steelheader69: think long and hard before you take the rails off the boat. If they're in good condition, tape off the fiberglass carefully and refinish them on the boat. They're held on with ring shank nails and once you take 'em off, they're not going to go back on the same way. It may seem like a pain to sand it all by hand but it's about the same amount of work to do them off the boat too.

[Steelheader69]

Oh, I should've mentioned. I'm NOT planing to take the outer gunnels off for THAT reason. LOL. I was going to do those on the boat. But the others are simply on with bolts (as you well know). Plus, those have inside crevises that would be easier to do off the boat. That's ALL of the dismantling I plan to do. Well, besides cutting out an opening in the rear seat area.

Actually, you can send them via a jpeg format. That would be great. Also, I don't have footpegs in my boat. I don't really need them, I can just put my feet on the seat in front of me if needed. LOL. But I don't have them.

One last thing, did you get an ok from yellowstone drift company to make copies of the stickers? I was asked this by my sticker maker, since could have a copywrite now on the boat. I figured it shouldn't be a problem. Either way, I'll email just in case.

[ 01-28-2004, 04:33 PM: Message edited by: Steelheader69 ]

[Paddlefish]

Amp:

Re: footbraces

Marathon canoe racing folks will 'glass parallel, front-to-back 1 X 3's (or similar) to their boat bottoms, then attach a crosswise piece of metal tubing (electrical conduit or aluminum tube) across the top, with multiple attachment point options.

Since you've already expressed some potential problems with bottom-based systems, you might consider the "poor man's cheapo but effective equivalent." :shocked:

Simply take a suitable length of "footbrace material," (large dowel, axe handle, metal tubing, etc.) and tie it at both ends to your rower's seat with nylon cord, clothesline, or equivalent. It doesn't look especially elegant hanging there but, with a little adjustment, it'll fit any leg length and be at exactly the correct angle for your direction of pull when you really need it.

Good luck.

[ampersat]

For whoever might be interested, the raw scans of my decals are at www.ampersat.com/eastside/es1.jpg and www.ampersat.com/eastside/es2.jpg.

[Steelheader69]

Hey, here's another favor for you. I'm going to have mine reproduced to lifesize. Could you give me the distance in inches from the anchor to the tip of bow. Also, was gonna tell you about the guy making mine. These won't have a white background on them. Would you prefer one in white to highlight on your boat? I'm having mine made in black. Will send you pics of mine when done for you to see if you'd like. I guess you could have them put on a white backer with black print (similar to original). Think he could do that if that's what you prefer.

[GutZ]

I'd get you some pictures, Amp, but the boat is out in Sappho and I am here in Ballard. Probably wont make it out there til Presidents day. I will get a few shots then and get them to you.

[ampersat]

Those images are full sized without modification whatsoever. If you were to print them as-is, they should come out the proper size. I'll have to measure them for you when I get home.

I was thinking about getting mine as black on a white background, in an oval shape with one or two oval border lines to set them off nicely once they're on the boat.

[Steelheader69]

Ok, I'll talk to him. He may be able to do that. Would be more of a 3D look to it. Or may be able to overlay. Not sure yet. Will ask. I just want it to lay on my boat, so don't need the background on it (since my boat is white). Will let you know once he gives me an idea.

[cully]

I don't know if you've seen Scotty's clamp mount for there rod holders but I got one and it works great. I did not want to drill into my side rails of my wood boat and the clamp mount seemed like a great option. I can move it at will. You can take a look at it on their website.

[ampersat]

On the decal where the rower is facing "east" the boat is 9" from the tip of the bow to the tip of the stern. On the one where he's facing "side", it's 9 1/8". Turns out one's slightly bigger than the other. Who'da thunk it?

Didja catch how they abreviated Washington? WN? Are you thinking of correcting it to WA or taking off the location altogether since the company doesn't really exist anymore? Since my goal is technically a restoration, I'm thinking of leaving them as-is. Kind of like the stamps with the planes upside down, the fault is what makes them unique and more valuable.

[Steelheader69]

I'm leaving as is actually. For some reason, when it came to businesses back then alot used the WN. I used to ask my Grandpa that. He owned a Standard Oil (before they were Chevrons) and all his free oil tubes and freebies always had "Tacoma, WN" on them. But plan to leave as is. Want it as original as possible. Only difference is my anchor system. I'm running a sidemount release with pulleys to a side release like on most DB's out there. I'm doing some upgrades, but trying to keep the boat as original as possible as well.