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Jeff_S
04-16-2003, 09:05 AM
I have a center console boat with carpet on the interior. The glue on the carpet has gone bad, so I am going to rip it all out, sand off the glue, prep the surface, and have it all gel coated. I have some holes in the deck from cup holders, rod holders, speakers, etc. That I need to fill. I got some marine body filler from boaters world. I plan on coating some plywood with epoxy and using it for backing on these holes, then filling in the holes with the body filler. I am going to paint over that with marine paint and then have the gel coat applied over that. My only concern is that the filler will be 3/4" thick as that is how thick the decking is. Is this too thick for filler? What would be a better way? Two speaker holes will be about 8" in dialeter and about 1/8" thick. Is this too large of an area for filler? Thanks for any advice.

Liqui-Fly
04-16-2003, 09:18 AM
I would try and duplicate what the composit is. Grind the holes out so the edges have a nice taper. Laminate cloth to the backside to use as your backer. Try ands find coring that is the same thickness as the existing core and work in pieces of chop strand mat over the coring and taper. I fear that if you simply fill the holes that eventually the repair will print through the gel coat because there is a defined repair seam.

David

Techno
04-17-2003, 06:25 PM
A really good suggestion for like dashboards was to cut a plug with a hole saw and insert it. You could do a similar method but leave it low enough to do a proper surface blend.
Parts I did, dash and speaker holes, were only glass thickness. I either duct taped behind and glassed in the majority of the beveled hole or layed some glass on the back side and did the beveled fill on the front. You can mix up some glass filler too. instead of a bulk of body filler use the glass filler, it can even be bought in a premixed can. Kitty hair- short strands, tiger hair long strands. Both of these are resin rich, clumpy/strandy and I prefer to mix my own from canned fillers, or by cutting up fiberglass into nice sizes.

The big speaker holes could be patched real easy by laminating up a patch of glass on some waxed paper. After it's cured glue it to the back and do the front patch. This patch doesn't have to be real thick and you want it thin to flex some any way. The real structural repair is done against it. Against the bevel which makes a larger surface area for the bond.
A 1/8" thick something has 1/8" (.125") of surface to bond to. Beveled at a 45* angle this increases to .176" And thats a sharp bevel. Probably would be more like a 1/4" of bond with the right bevel.
If the bevel is so gradual you can just laminate sloppy like and sand down. The glass will lay against the bevel real nice.
Some smaller holes, a patch of plastic layed over and "boarded down" gets the patch smoothed out pretty well. Use a flat thing or just your hand and smooth the plastic down. It's not a final finish just a cheat. But the backing needs to be strong- not duct tape. I did this to make the patchs just slighty low so I could do a finish fill without a a large amount of protrusion to sand or too much gap to fill a 2nd time. I pushed the excess to the rim where it was easy to power sand off. This was on a curved dash and difficult to get the sander to all of it.

No need for paint for a gel coat. In fact it would be a bad idea. Gel goes right on the resin.