What a day!

[BALANCE]

What a gift, today's beautiful weather! 65 degrees! The job at hand was to remove the fuel tank because, as previously discussed, I had a 'clog' between the tank and the primary filter. Removing the fuel line (to refresh your memories) at the primary and blowing into the tank and releasing the fuel into a clear container allowed some - black stuff - to come out. Ever since I've had this nagging feeling that there must be more. At that point, I had a half a tank and never topped it off thinking I have to deal with this somehow, at the very least...fuel polishing.

But I decided to go radical and remove the tank and take it to a radiator cleaner and have it 'purified'. So today I removed the fuel line from the tank, attached a clear line and proceeded to drain the tank in preparation for removing it. I did the same blow into the tank to agitate the situation and every drop that came out was clear, clear, clear. My gut was telling me that I am being too proavtice and paranoid and aborted my mission. The tank is now empty.

I hope I"ve made the right decision. That is the good news, I think, the bad news is that I did not abort at the beginning of the day and go sailing. What a day!!

The real reason for the post is to ask: How does one re core when the core is plywood, not balsa. I've done the latter and know the drill. But soaking, saturating plywood does not seem like a doable thing. The deck fill for this fuel tank elbows to the tank. Along side this deck fill is an old abandoned deck plate for a manual bilge pump. I decided to get rid of that and move the deck fill to that area so that I have a straight shot down to guage fuel levels and facilitate future fuel polishing or tank cleaning. Doing it this way was not an option because of the elbow. So I layed a bunch of cloth, roving and resin today to the bottom level of the core, about 3/4 - 1 inch. Should I put a circle of plywood in next and then lay some more glass? Or should I just do more of the same laying of glass and forego and core considerations? Once this is complete I will be cutting a new (smaller hole) in the same place for the deck fill and a straight shot down. The plywood edge in the existing hole was dry.

Thanks in advance for any input.

[Capn_Tom]

If the difference in the diameter of the exisiting hole and the planned hole is not that great I would do as you suggest and just build it up with solid glass. If you were to core it with plywood you would cut the core back from the opening of the new hole and fill the void with thickened epoxy to seal the edge of the core.