Titebond Bad!

So I'd come across this nugget earlier, but it is worth repeating, because now I have first hand experience. Titebond is good glue, but not repairable. It won't stick to itself, and epoxy wont stick to it either.

PL Premium, which is what I used, glues to itself in excellent secondary bonds, and epoxy bonds to it even better. I have many areas where the PL comes to the surface, and I faired over with epoxy, then ground it all fair. The epoxy and PL didnt separate to even the slightest degree. I am well pleased.

J-Nerd

 

Huh.

 

Sounds like good stuff.
Polyurethane glues have a lot to recommend.

-Will (Dragonfly)

 

Used a lot of PL premium. Anyone can use it to make good joints. And if you're gluing loose spaced joints mix in wood sawdust-sanding dust up to 40%. I seamed my entire boat bottom planks with PL and it stays dry, does not need to take up. After gluing planks together with the sawdust -pl mix, I overcoated the wood surface with Black PL mixed with 30% milled fiberglass fibers. Doing this seals the entire hull and makes it very strong and resilient. Better than epoxy and fiberglass as that has no give, can not yield to the wood when it moves. My boat is a 37 foot Eggharbor which I also reframed. I did this in 2006, and it has remained solid. AND, no seacriters can eat your hull.

Simply plank the boat, then force the PL - sawdust mix into the seams using a putty knife. As it swells you can go back over it back and forth to force it deeper into the crack. This also works well for open wood cracks in planks. The glue - sawdust mix also takes stains well.

 

oh, and pl is not fully cured until the next day, even though it hardens quicker than that. Black PL can take several days to fully cure. Cure time is much shorter in hot humid weather.
You use a cereal bag plastic on top of PL to contain the swelling as it cures, it will peel right off. You can also use painters tape over top of PL, it will peel off after it sets.

 

https://goo.gl/photos/Y876jwe1jceTp9Zz6
And Black PL has no swell as it cures. it is similar to 5200 but a slightly less hard rubber, meaning it will more easily flex and stretch. PLUS, it is a lot cheaper.
Loctite with these PL products has solved many wooden boat hull issues, and they may not even know it. I have experimented with several hull coatings and repair ideas on my 37 1970 EggHarbor, and this has been the best so far. The other yellow coating is Sanitred Permaflex, which is harder to use and pricier, and IMO then , not as good. It did not stick on the white oak keel, after 6 years I peeled it off like a glove.
the black pl has more stretch to it, and so far so good. I only mixed the milled fibers from the bow back 10 feet. So keel and aft stern area is pure black pl. But I recommend the milled fibers, it does strengthen the coating a lot. black PL, is well, just imagine tire rubber on your boat bottom. My thinking was perhaps experimenting, and how about if the bow area hits something underwater, so make it stronger there. Any fiber could be added to black PL.
black pl can be sanded, and i smoothed the front bow also using a wire wheel on my drill, which worked much better than on pure black pl.
And you can see the embedded fiberglass fibers glistening in the sunlight, and the smell as it cures reminds me of chocolate, so it is not unpleasant, but you should do it with plenty of air.

The black pl has been holding up fine to repeated barnacle scraping.

 

I removed the worm shoes, repaired some old keel damage from worms in the aft area, then coated black pl on the keel and keel bottom. After it cured. I used Cumaru wood as the new worm shoe. Screwed it into the oak keel, the over coated with more black pl. Black pl sticks to itself really well. This is also water PROOF.

 

What's a 'worm shoe'?

-Will (Dragonfly)

 

Will,
Bottom sacrificial timber under the keel.

 

That's what it sounded like, and does that work like a sacrificial anodes, but for worms, or is that just an expression?

You know, I was raised around boats, wooden boats. Lived aboard with my family for nearly four years. My father ran wood constructed headboats out of Clearwater. We sailed to and from Maine, I've sailed across the Atlantic after getting married and graduating from woodworking school. Done a little cruising in the Caribbean. I have a passion for sailboats, and am particularly interested on wooden boats, though my dream boat is steel, so I paid attention to what there was to see in each new area we sailed to, and I have never heard of a worm shoe.
I have heard of putting a protective resplacable wooden bottom on something like a beachable skiff, but I am surprised that I have not come across that term before.

-Will (Dragonfly)

 

I've never heard of one either.
I looked it up.

 

Worm shoe is a apt term. It is like a shoe on your foot. 'Worm' means it is meant to be a replaceable plank of wood so that any bottom worms wont go past that into the keel. Typically a piece of tar paper was put between the shoe and keel, as it is thought worms wont be able to get past that, and the shoe is just holding that paper to the keel. Since a keel bottom can scrape off coatings exposing wood to worms, a shoe is a very good idea. A shoe could also be a piece of metal. But metal underwater may rot too and wood is a lot cheaper. I used Cumaru as it is real dense and hard and strong and can support the boat when on blocks. And I found some meant for decks not too far away. Pine would crush under the weight of the boat.

Here is the forward end of my wormshoe near the bow area.
You can see the PL-sawdust mix in the screw holes and seams. I sanded this smooth then overlaid with a skim coat of PL, after that went over again with black PL.

The ends of the worm shoe are angled so that the ends hold the ends up against the hull, you dont want it catching and coming loose. Longest sections I could work with was about 6 feet because I had to jack and move keel blocks. This end of the worm shoe curves up at the bow, so yes cumaru can bend a little.

I screwed this worm shoe on, the one that was there was nailed and full of worm holes. Real bad looking, if no shoe this would be your keel.