Dan,

Get that boat outside. and work on it. Measure and then pull off the outer gunwales, then take a belt sander to the outside of that boat and get rid of the paint, scum and age in about an hour. Patch the damage in the cedat and recoat the outside with a tough urethane or polyurethane varnish. Put on replacement outer gunwales, temporarily. Don't overdo the fasteners or use glue. This doesn't take much time. Probably a weekend, maybe two. Make sure you do all your sanding wearing a respirator! That old paint is probably full of lead.

If you need to replace any of those copper nails, you can find the proper replacements at www.clarkcraft.com Get the flat cut copper tacks. The points on these are designed to be easily turned back.

Once you see how nice the outside of the boat looks. You'll want to redo the inside. Here is where you'll spend more time. You'll need to remove the inner gunwale, seats, and other miscellaneous parts before you can get to stripping the grime off the insides. Try using a liquid paint stripper to remove any remaining varnish. If you are lucky, when any underlying varnish softens, it will come off and bring all the junk that is on top of it with it. After that, it is a lot of sanding. Between now and the time you get started on this, see if you can find some Oxalic acid. It works fairly well as a bleach for wood. Stained areas might be easier to bleach back to "like new" condition than to sand.

After you get the inside refinished, replace the inner gunwale and properly refasten the outer gunwale. Don't plan on refinishing the older gunwales. They get a lot of wear and were probably designed to be replaceable. Usually all you need to do is rip some long stock to the right dimensions. Bronze screws are the only way to go. Stainless steel would look funny on an old boat, and brass screws are weak. Half of 'em break when you try to drive them into hardwoods. New wood there is the first thing people see and it makes the whole project look nicer. Plus, the old wood is more likely to give you splinters when you are rowing.

Enjoy the project.

PGJ