Recoring the Bridge Deck & Fairing the Rails

October 8, 2019

With the afternoon suddenly made available to me, I got straight to work on the boat.  I had sanded the rails in the previous work session, so today I went around the boat and wiped the rails down with a solvent to clear any remaining sanding debris.  I mixed the two-part Totalboat TotalFair fairing compound in a 1:1 ratio, and with a small plastic squeegee pressed it in to the voids and low spots around the outboard edge of the boat - the deck flange rests directly on the hull's inward flange.

I simply worked my way around the boat, working the material into the voids.

I finished up on the port aft.  Later in the day, I came back and water-washed the fairing compound to remove any amine blush that might have formed.  The TotalFair product advertises that it can be sanding within three hours, but I felt that it was a bit pliable yet.  Instead of risking gummed up sandpaper, I decided to wait for another day to sand down the material.

I moved on to the bridge deck.  I have been noticing over the past couple months an area on the bridge deck (aft edge), that could be a potential issue.  Sure enough, a couple days ago the crack that I had observed failed.  I could easily depress the top skin with a couple fingers.  Time to recore.  I marked a small area to explore...

...and was rewarded with a very wet balsa core.

There were a series of fasteners here at one time, spaced about every six inches, that had been removed and filled with a sealant that remained fairly flexible.  These were the points of water ingress.  The whitish-looking circle is  a column of sealant.

Removing the bad core was an iterative process...chasing the the bad back to the good.

In the end, I opened up a section of the bridge deck roughly 17" by 9".

With the good, clean balsa core visible now, I tapered the edge of the opening to receive new fiberglass for the top skin.

I made my way back over to the shop to grab a sheet of plastic to create templates for the fiberglass top skin, as well as the core material.

I cleaned the surfaces with acetone, taped the holes from the underside of the bottom skin, and then applied epoxy resin to wet the substrate out.  I also applied the resin to the underside of the new balsa core material, and with the remaining resin, I mixed some thickened epoxy to apply in the gaps around the perimeter of the opening.  Back in the shop, I mixed another cup of resin to wet out the layers of fiberglass.  With the fiberglass layers wet out, I thickened the balance of the resin.  Back in the boat, I placed the new core material in place, pushing the thickened resin in the remaining voids.

I then layered the fiberglass on top of the new core material, starting with the smaller of the three.  I wrapped things up by spreading a layer of thickened epoxy over top of the third fiberglass layer, and then placed peel ply over the work.  The peel ply will eliminate the need for water-washing and sanding prior to fairing work - a huge time and energy saver!  There will be some additional fairing and sanding, but this unforeseen project is ~90% complete.

Total Time Today: 4 hrs