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Permalink Reply by lhedrick on October 9, 2011 at 6:55pm

Get is all dried out.

Place plywood scrap on the inside and outside of the area and hold it in place with screws.  Drill a few 1/4 holes all the way through the damaged bottom and the scrap plywood plates.  Now remove the scrap cover plates and set them aside

If the layers of the plywood have separated, try to pull them appart a bit and then inject epoxy under it.  Use a slow hardner and get as much epoxy into it as possible.  Then mix up a bit more and thicken it up with ground glass or silica till it's like honey or peanut butter.  Get the stuff under the bad layers any way you can.  Inject it, use a long brush, thin strips of wood, whatever you can find. Push bolts through the inside plates  and cover with plastic.  Now put the inside plate in place so the bolts go all the way through the bottom.  Cover the bottom plate with plastic and place it over the bolts.  Use wing nuts to press it all together.  When cured patch the holes and finish with a piece of fiberglass which covers the entire area.

 

Hope it makes sense without pictures.

 

 

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Permalink Reply by Rick Newman on October 9, 2011 at 7:10pm

Troy, do a search for "side split" you will find a series of pictures that Greg Hatten took of his very similar boat repair early this year. Pretty much right along the lines of Larry's suggestions.

 

Rick Newman

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Permalink Reply by Greg Hatten on October 9, 2011 at 7:24pm

Yes -  I've gotten pretty good at fixing holes in the bottom of my boat... for future reference, I recommend getting really really good at missing rocks instead of fixing holes - although I have picked up a very useful skill-set in the process.  ha ha

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Permalink Reply by Troy Nicolls on October 10, 2011 at 1:14pm

Great! Thank you all for your replies. I think sandwiching the epoxied spot between plastic or wax papered plywood scraps will do the trick. I will probably have to gouge out some of the recently oiled splintered bottom plywood. This is on a relatively flat portion of the bottom, so the repair should conform quite nicely. Thanks again!

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Permalink Reply by AJ DeRosa on October 11, 2011 at 8:45pm

All good ideas on pulling it all back together with bolts and backing plates.

 

Here's another way.

 

If the itegrity of the glass/epoxy bottom is good, which it usually is on this type of hit, a patch of good 1/4' marine ply can be fashioned.  Cut it big enough to get into the good surrounding wood.  Round the corners or make it circular depending on the shape of the fracture.  Trace it onto the area of damage.  Now use a router set to 1/4" and cut away to the traced edge.  Most bottoms are at least 3/8" ply and most likely 1/2' or greater.  Soak the area and the bottom and edges of the patch with unthickened slow kicking epoxy.  Follow that in a half hour or so with some thicken epoxy and drop the patch in.  After it comes to full cure clean up the ooze and oil it.

We have done several patches like this to our working boats and restorations.  In year or so the patch blends right in and you will have to look hard to see it.

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Permalink Reply by Troy Nicolls on October 12, 2011 at 4:03pm

Now that is a cool idea worth consideration which I would have never thought of.

Thanks AJ

 

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