Repairing a wooden hull

The holes were created by an unscheduled stop on some piles aided by the Exmouth tide!

The first thing that Ed Higham and Francis Screech did was to make the holes a regular shape, this would make repairing it a bit easier to do.

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Whilst Francis was getting on with making the shapes regular, Ed insted of beaing lazy and watching, decided it was a good idea to cut the wood out the right size to fit the holes!! (note: it was marine ply)

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After Francis had made the holes regular, he decided to make the sides as smooth as possible, he did this by using fine sand paper!! (note: used fine sand paper to get the smoothest edge)

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With the second hole francis repeated the way he did the other hole but on a much larger scale.

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We Then worked from the top hole and stuck battens across the inside of the tank so they would provide stiffness and shape to the chine. On top of the battens we expoxied on a piece of marine ply exactly the right dimensions and waited for it to set. Using fibreglass tape and resin, we sealed all around the join INSIDE of the boat so we did'nt disturb the hull shape at all.

The top hole was slightly harder to work at becuase there was no access hole so we stuck a frame around the inside of the hole which after was covered in silicone sealanta, then placed on a perfectly sized piece of ply. The idea was that the silicone would squeeze out and seal the gap. With no visible sign of silicone, we decided to use marine filler over the top of the repair which we knew would sand down afterwards. We did this, primed it, then painted it.

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So far the bottom hole seems watertight which is a huge relief as this repair is the first big job we had ever done and was a huuuge hole! Sadly the top hole failed after a speedy jump out onto the wire resulted in it becoming cracked. We didnt think there was any way of making an 'invisible' repair strong enough so we fibreglassed over the repair and then put a patch on top to get us sailing again. Even after a windy day, all repairs have survived and only a dribble of water came out, woo! :-) Now that was a good deal!! (and no holes in our walets)

  • tech/whamrepair.txt
  • Last modified: 2020/12/09 19:22
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