I am sure that this has been discussed to death but this has a small twist, pardon the pun!
I bought an '85 H16 last fall and got to sail a couple times before the snow fell; one thing I noticed is that there was alot of relative hull movement when experiencing high waves. Upon further research, I determined that this is a common problem or occurence with older H16's. I found a docuemnt by Gary Willcox from the "On the Wire" magazine that details the disassembly and gluing of the tramp frame to eliminate the flex. In the article, he tells us to lift one hull, while resting on the trailer, and see how high it can be lifted before the second hull starts to move; however, he does not state what degree of this movement justfies the effort to glue the frame. That is, what is an acceptable value for a H16?
Tramp Frame Flex: where is the movement occuring? Is it between the cross braces in the corner castings or is it the actual corner castings that are moving around the hull pylons? Here's what I am really getting at: I am pretty sure that I will need to glue my frame, and what I really want to do is to only glue the four aluminum rails of the frame to the corner castings but I don't want to glue the corner castings to the pylons.
I noticed about a foot of independent movement between the hulls on my old boat before I epoxied it last year. I glued everything and the difference is night and day. Much better. If it's just 6 inches, I would still think about doing it(This is my opinion based on how much better my boat sails now that it is glued tight). The only reason not to glue the pylons with the frame is to take it apart later. If you are not planing on taking it apart later I would strongly recomend you glue the whole thing. I too used the article you mentioned, and with two people it was pretty easy. If you didn't end up gluing the pylons, you could use cut-up plastic milk jugs as shims to tighten that connection, but they will wear out pretty fast, so you'll have to do it a couple times a season to keep the boat tight. Hope this is what you were looking for, andrew
Thanks for the input. Did you follow the instructions letter for letter or did you make any alterations or in retro spect, would you make any changes??
I followed the instructions leter for leter. I used the 206 hardener, which allows more working time because it was over 90 degrees when I did it. When you use the epoxy filler, use more rather than less to make a pretty thick paste. If your jib and main traveller tracks are at all loose, drill out all the rivets and reattach them. You will not be able to do this in the future without having drilled out rivet cases in your frame forever with a glued boat. So if you're not sure, do it while the boat is apart.
And, I got everything I needed from Jamestown Distributers(don't know the website, but any serch will find them) to get everything I needed. Things like rivets will be a lot less expensive if you buy a box of 100 from them(the size the article recomends will fit almost every rivet on the boat).
Also, do a search on this website, because nearly every question you will have has probably already been answered.
