Friday, January 17, 2014

Filling The Void

  I truly understand the fact that many people have no clue how to go about a proper repair on the bottom of a boat, be it fiberglass and especially wood. It's just not stuff many people get to learn.

 After tearing out, and I mean literally "tearing" out the gobs of 5200 that was put in this void of space surrounding the strut I began the filling to fair the hull around this very important piece. The strut, vital piece of bottom hardware which needs to be fastened with the utmost rigidity possible to secure a strong point of bearing for the propeller shaft extruding from the bottom of the boat. There is no slack allowed here, it MUST be ridged! Notice the large bolt heads. The filling is just fluff, and only fills the void to keep the bottom shaped fair.


But, it must stay attached, and to do that, it must be properly prepared so the product of choice bonds with the bronze and the fiberglass hull in this case. Grind/heavy scratch all the surfaces. In this pic I added a couple of pieces of hard foam to fill the larger sections of the void.

The next step was to fill the rest with a soft (410) fairing epoxy filler (my material of choice) and  hold it in place with wax paper to let harden. This will get one more fairing with the same material after this hardens up to conform to the shape of the hull as best I can. With this filling, in the future, if anyone needs to replace the strut, this material will easily chisel away to expose the strut base and bolts.

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