Re: Hole in bottom panel

Posted by LeeG on Jul 12, 2004

My experience repairing a Chesapeake triple was the new CLC demo triple. I had just installed a rudder with the mahogany rudder block situated about an inch inboard of the sheer clamps. While it was outside on sawhorses a big wind knocked it off and it landed on it's deck driving the rudder into the mahogany rudder block and the mahohany rudder block through the glassed deck leaving a neat hole. For that one I cut the hole a little bigger to make it an even rectangle, glued a backing plate under it like Laszlo describes, then fit a piece of ply into the hole that was as exact the the hole as I could make it. Then filled/sanded the piece and redid the same rudder block. The deck was painted in that area. For the hull hole I'd do roughly the same thing but leave optional the use of a backing plate depending on whether you care if there's a piece of wood on the inside where one foot is located. Cut the hole bigger into a shape that you could duplicate with a 4mm plug. Diamond shape maybe. Trace and cut out the 4mm ply piece to fit in the hole. The easiest thing is what Laszo describes but instead of filling the hole with hard to sand epoxy put in the backing plate on the inside and finish with the plug on the outside, sand an area bigger than the patch on the outside and glass, fairing in with the hull glass. If you didn't want a backing plate then you can do it in a couple extra steps. Make a couple oversized backing plates that can fit over the hole on either side,,1/4" or so so that a screw through them couldn't bend the wood. Cover them in plastic. Drill a 1/8" hole through the patch and two backing plates. Seal the edges of the hole and edges of the patch. Put into place with thickened epoxy and tighten the stack together. When cured. Remove plates and sand patched area to take three pieces of 6oz cloth on the inside. When cured turnover and sand down for one or two layers of glass. Now that I think about it I'd be tempted to lay down one layer of glass on the inside between the plastic covered plate and the wood patch just to make the patch strong enough to handle the interior sanding,,,in that case you could do the outside first and the inside last,,,but for some reason doing the cosmetic finish last on the outside makes sense. Sure makes the interior backing plate look easy but why not have fun.

In Response to: Re: Hole in bottom panel by veto on Jul 12, 2004

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