A
common problem with restoring or repairing an older boat is where an
unpainted or poorly protected surface has been saturated with engine
oil or similar.
Nothing will stick very well.
There may be
repairs necessary in the area or you may want to epoxy seal the boat or
section of the boat.
Of course this would not have
happened in
the first place had the timber been protected properly with epoxy
(assuming the hull construction is compatible).
There
is no foolproof method - but the method below has worked for Duck Flat Wooden
Boats in a number of their restoration projects.
I
asked them, because I didn't know the answer when helping someone who
wanted to use a high pressure hose and degreaser.
I
think the Duck method works because they used time and the heat of the
sun to do the work - it will always take TIME to get oil out of wood -
it took years to get in there!
A Caution on using High Pressure
Water Sprays with Timber Be careful with
the high pressure - they are but can do a lot of damage if not used
carefully.
The most common types of
damage are stripping surface veneers out of the ply and breaking glue
joins between framing and ply.
If you keep it a good
200mls away from the surfaces it should be OK.
But maybe you don't need
a high pressure hose.
Removing Oil the Natural
(Wholistic) Way Please don't
take the title above toooooo seriously! :-)
I spoke to David Wilson at Duck Flat about this - they had a
restoration project that was saturated with engine oil.
Every time they put the
hull out in the sun the timber would warm and more oil would seep to
the surface.
They used a number of
methods. Washing repeatedly with degreaser and
solvent. But one thing they found useful was putting fine sawdust in
the boat and leaving it in the sun - when the oil came to the surface
it was absorbed by the sawdust so then more oil would be able to come
to the surface.
They basically kept
going every few days for a few weeks until very little oil was
coming out on the surface when the boat was left in the sun. They then
gave it a degrease/solvent wash, let it dry properly in the shade over
a few days - and kept it out of the sun until all the gluing work was
complete.