What type of resin to use? epoxy or poly. for this hole in Bow?

[J-Bird]

I have a good size hole in my Bomber. Below are pics. I have had so many people tell me to use epoxy and others telling me to just use poly. What do you think for this project?

[yokebutt]

For general repairs I normally use vinylester resin, it gives you a better bond to the old laminate while being compatible with polyester gelcoat, but polyester should work just fine in your case. Assuming you can get to the back-side of the damage, cut/grind away all the broken glass, grind a bevel on the back-side, (12:1 taper or so) screw on a piece of plywood to cover the hole, (put tape and wax on it first, use sheet-metal screws from the outside, then cut them flush on the inside, that way you can laminate over them) template and cut all your glass, wet it out and install, remove the plywood mold when cured. Sometimes you'll have to do some grinding and glassing after the mold comes off, like the holes from the screws holding the plywood on. Once you have the structure re-established, you're ready to fair it out, there are a lot of choices of fairing compound, for big jobs you can make your own with resin and/or gelcoat mixed with filler powders like Q-cell or phenolic micro-balloons, for smaller things I like 3M Hi-strength putty for bigger gouges and evercoat glazing putty for finishing it off. Wetsand and polish out an adjacent area, pick a nice overcast morning to match your gelcoat color, dilute the pigments in the same base as you're using before adding small amounts at a time, just smear some un-catalyzed gel on the polished area, then add some pigment, smear some on, add some pigment, smear some on........ Sand up the surface surrounding the repair for a few inches, spray the gel on tapering it out towards the edges, then spray it with PVA to cure the surface. Finally, all you have to do is wetsand and polish the gel out to make it look like nothing ever happened.


Happy spooging,

Yokebutt.

[Ssor]

How did you do that? Rear-end a dump truck? Gonna be hard to get to the inside. If these are not flat surfaces then plywood will have to be shaped to the curves. This is a good time to make haste slowly.

[makeitfly]

Hi
If there is no reasonable access to the back of the dammaged area all can be done from the outside without to much trouble . Reshape the damaged area and feather out the old glass ,then on the opposite side of the deck just take a light mould of the same area . Yes i know its the opposite but parts of it will fit nicely and will be the same shape .
Wax and release the surface and mask it out a bit bigger in size that you will need to go into the hole . Then lay a couple of layers of csm to form a new panel . As long as the new piece is a fraction bigger it will do and give a starting point to build up the new part in the deck . Lightly stick the new glass shape in through the hole . This can be stuck with auto filler or a hot glue gun . This new glass panel then gets 1 layer of csm to hold it all in place perminantly ,with a light scuff its ready to glass back to the original thickness and you dont have ply or screws to remove later . Vinyl resin is good to use in this type of situation as it adheres well and is stronger than the original .
Note - For the final layers i always use 2 layers of csm and a layer of peel ply . When it is rolled out it should be the same level as the original deck and the peel ply will give a better indication of this as it is nice and smooth .
If the surface is to high it can be ground off and the strenght of any woven or fabrics used are not lost only the csm . When its hard remove the peel ply and lightly scuff with a grinder , then a thin smear of auto filler all over to be sanded to the final shape ready for primming and painting .

[jimslade]

To cover the hole I would screw something flexible to the inside. I have used a piece of nidacore before. Then use vinylester resin, epoxy in this case would be a waste of money and its not a major structural area of the boat.