it can be done

Posted by Howard on Sep 15, 2004

jon,

i did a wr180 without nails. came out great. have built with nails and i would describe the approach that i used as being much less stressful than dealing with nails.

- prefit the deck and ensure that you have some anchor point at both ends to prevent the deck from sliding from side to side.

- need to trim the deck per dave houser's comments to no more than an inch overhang...else the tape will cause the deck to bulge up to much.

- i user scotch packing tape with fibreglass reinforcement...i did not want any stretch...i wanted to ensure that what i left was what i was going to get after the epoxy cured.

- i placed the tape approximately four inches on centre...the same spacing as for the nails.

- have an assistant to help you...somebody who can push the deck into place while you focus on taping the deck. you will need to make each piece long enough to make it from the crown of the deck to slighly past the keel of the boat...to ensure that the tape does not free itself. be sure to have plenty of tape on hand to get the whole thing done with plenty of "safety tape" just in case you mess up a couple pieces.

- sight down the deck line as you are progressing and when you are done to ensure that you are not creating waves by varying the tension to much between succesive bands of tape.

- make sure that you do not have dry joints and that you have the appropriate amount of cabosil-thickened epoxy on the sheer clamp to have a solid bond to the deck. if you do it right, when you tape the deck down you should get just a slight excess "squeeze out" at the sheer clamp-deck joint. if you don't, put some more epoxy there/push extra thickened epoxy in with a popsickle stick.

- make sure that the epoxy is properly cured before removing the tape. test some of the overflow with a nail to ensure it is hard. you do not have the strength of the nails supporting you...so when you remove the tape...the epoxy must be ready.

when removing the tape, pull it gently so as to minimize any wood it may pick up. it should not leave any residue or marks.

hs

In Response to: Re: No deck nails? by Dave Houser on Sep 15, 2004

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