Dent Repair????

[Lagom]

Hi There

I, rather stupidly, managed to beach my Australian built steel sloop last year. I'm about to commence repairs and would appreciate some advice.

She's concstructed with one chine, and the dents are above and below this, about a foot each way, around the beam of the hull. The dents go in about 8 inches, with no cracks and no water coming in. Non of the framing is showing signs of fatigue.

Can I get away with stripping back to metal, priming, then simply epoxy filling the dents to get a flat surface, then paint and epoxy in the normal way?

Thanks in advance for any help you may be able to give!

Steve

[CDK]

No, hammer back the dents before using epoxy filler so you need only a thin layer. Saves a lot of epoxy and makes a better repair with less chance of cracks appearing due to the different expansion/contraction factor.

[Lagom]

OK... Never done this before. Is it just a case of hitting it hard?

[Luckless]

Hit it carefully, not just hard. The goal should be to just hit it enough to start moving it, and keep working away at it. How big of a boat is this? Pictures always help suggestions on repair jobs.

One of the biggest problems is that by denting the metal you have stretched it, which means that hammering it back will stretch it even more. So a flawless repair is just about impossible without cutting the section out and replacing it. (Of course, flawless repairs are generally overrated anyway. Flaws build character! At least that is what I keep telling myself.)

So just remember that as you hammer the dents back out to not let them become bumps. If you work the metal back and forth too much it will become brittle and be prone to cracking under stress.