Re: Filling gaps in SWHB1

Posted by John Beck on Apr 10, 2007

Mike, At this point you don't need to worry about gaps until you've completed the deck, inverted it and done rough scraping and sanding of the inside. You can perfect your gap filling on the inside. Only after you've glassed the inside, glued it to the deck and sanded it with 60/80 grit ROS do you need to consider gap filling (assuming you can't see light through them). I was happy to find that most gaps of concern in rough state either disappeared or were minimal after sanding.

Regarding fill material, I agree that epoxy is more difficult to work with, but I'd be concerned about any oils in a wood filler. Some one else recently posted that he successfully used saw dust mixed in Titebond wood glue. I'm not how sure how hard that is to sand. Epoxy cures hard as a rock, true enough, but is easy enough to flatten BEFORE it's rock hard. Being neat and precise in application reduces the aftermath of removal. Depending on the color you can mix up different fillers of lower density to make them easier to sand. Unless you plan on staining it a different color before glassing it doesn't matter if you've "pre-stained" it with epoxy since it will all be the same color in the end. I agree that the glass sheathing adds great strength but I think it is important that the substrate be one uniform cohesive structure. Epoxy fillers are adhesives; wood fillers are not, and may compromise the substrate.

Epoxy: the 8th wonder of the world, it is great for everything. They even used it to glue the new Woodrow Wilson bridge support columns together (aided by a 6" diameter cable compressing it all together). We need to start sending epoxy, rather than troops, to Iraq.

In Response to: Filling gaps in SWHB17 by Mike on Apr 10, 2007

Replies:

• Re: Filling gaps in SWHB1 by Jim L on Apr 10, 2007
  • Re: Filling gaps in SWHB1 by Mike on Apr 10, 2007