posted 11-17-2002 12:46 PM ET (US)            

Now I look back on my previous glass repairs, and think "geez, I'm a ham-fisted klutz". Thanks a lot, guys...

posted 11-18-2002 07:10 AM ET (US)            

Thanks for taking the time and effort to document so thoroughly. I really love this website and it is the people that make it great. First class all the way.

posted 11-18-2002 09:13 AM ET (US)            

Does the gel coat color darken slightly as it dries?

posted 11-18-2002 12:09 PM ET (US)            

I had a similar major repair and see the similarities. You brought back those painful memories I had of "Good gosh. Now what?" to "Whew!! That job turned out better than I ever expected."

I didn't gelcoat to hide the repair but after seeing what you did I think I will.

Again, thanks to both. And jimh for publishing.

posted 11-18-2002 01:30 PM ET (US)            

Regarding the instructions, they contain some hand drawings describing the process, so we really need a scan. lhg is mailing me a clean copy to scan since Tom's looked pretty bad by the time I finished pawing it with dirty hands.

The purpose of the 1" strips is just to make it easier to pull the individual fibers to pieces. The fiberglass used in the mash layer are individual short fibers mostly less than 1 1/2" long, organized like "pick up sticks", in other words, random loose fibers.

On reforming the chine, the outer surface is easier, you carry the plane of the relatively flat side of the boat down, sanding with large flat blocks. The harder part is the shaping the underside of the chine. The outside angle of the chine (between the upper side of the boat and the under side of the chine) is close to a right angle. But the angle formed by the underside of the chine and the lower hull is greater than 90 degrees, more like 115. That's where Tom made a block to match the angle. We ended up covering just the top face of the block with sandpaper, because it was the underside of the chine that needed the forming, but running the other face of the block along the lower hull enabled us to get the underside of the chine at the correct angle.

Actually, the angle of the chine to the lower hull varies from place to place, so a couple of different angled blocks would help. One for forward, one futher aft.

posted 11-18-2002 01:37 PM ET (US)            

We produced chopped fibers by cutting up some glass cloth (at a 45 degree angle to the fibers) into c. 1” strips and then simply pulling the fibers apart with our fingers. This produced a nice fluffy pile of fibers about 1” to 1.5” long.

The instructions call for adding fibers to the catalyzed resin to produce a “stiff mash” and that’s what we did. Taylor catalyzed some resin in a paper cup and then we just added fibers and mixed them up until we thought we had what we needed. It was a pretty intuitive process.

The wood sanding blocks that Taylor described were used to sand the under side of the chine where it meets the lower hull. These two planes meet at an angle greater than 90 degrees, maybe something like 120 degrees. The two planes do not meet in a sharp corner of course, so the block needed to be rounded over as well.

I just used a piece of 1” or 1.25” material and ran one edge over my jointer until I had the desired angle then I radiused the edge until it fit up in there just right. By doing this we were able to use the intersection of chine and hull as a guide to run this sand paper covered block back and forth and maintain the shape and get the repair really fair in a spot that would otherwise be difficult to deal with.

jimh, I’m looking at that photo and I do not see the gelcoat as lighter than the rest of the hull. In fact it looks darker but that is mostly because it is shiny and is reflecting the light differently that the roughed up gelcoat of the hull.

In fact, the gelcoat we used was a tiny bit lighter than the hull. We too wondered if it would dry darker but it does not. Gelcoat maintains its color from liquid to solid.

I had anticipated that the gelcoat from Spectrum would be a bit darker, not lighter, because these hulls typically get a bit bleached by UV rays over time (at least that has been my experience with my boats) but Taylor's boat is fairly new (1988) and has been very well cared for.

In the end, the difference in color was very hard for me to perceive and Taylor decided not to mess with it though he did purchase some black and white coloring to adjust the color up or down.

posted 11-18-2002 01:42 PM ET (US)            

Larry - Angel and I took Tom and Christina to dinner at Bruke's Creole Cafe in Ballard, it was the least we could do. http://www.burkscafe.com/pictures.html . Great place.

How much beer? That would depend. The deal was that anytime we needed more, Tom would just walk me and my wallet over to the nearby convenience store. I'm not sure I was keeping a careful tally.

posted 11-18-2002 03:24 PM ET (US)            

Since my so-called repairs look closer to where you started than where you finished, I can honestly say that I aspire to be a Ham-Fisted Klutz.

Craftwmanship like this is an inspiration. I may even go grind out some old repairs and do it again properly.

posted 11-18-2002 04:15 PM ET (US)         

The West people, with their own highly regarded repair manual, have unwittingly added confusion to the Whaler hull repair process, while at the same time doing a great job marketing their material. But their manual does not apply specifically to repair of Whaler hulls, and is some case could actually promote further damage or delamination of the hull. Their main purpose in publishing their Fiberglass repair publication, of course, is to sell West material for the huge majority of boats in the world, those with single skin hulls. For these purposes everyone seems to indicate it is an excellent material, although somewhat difficult to work with.

I have examined both the West manual and Whaler's instructions, and the repair process required by Whaler is simply not in the West manual. West has never indicated that their methods are for Boston Whalers.

So hopefully, Tom and Taylor's work will be a great benefit to those needing to do hull repair on their Whalers.

The one thing that has always impressed me with Boston Whaler, particularly during the "Classic" days, was an obsession with outfitting and detailing the boat, and components, for the bad days of boating, when weather and other conditions unexpectedly turn against the boater, and things get serious. Everything, including the little details, is designed to protect the occupants from disaster when the going gets bad. Safety rails, firmly attached, Mills canvas that REALLY protects, battery boxes and straps that hold, hull drains that work on their own rather than a reliance on $15 pumps, kickers firmly attached to the hull rather than on brackets that can fail, and, hull repair instructions like these that won't fail when you need them most. Almost all boats are safe for the fair weather days, but what appears to be Whaler "overdesign" on those same days is what you need to survive on the bad days.

Never rig or repair your Whaler based on what is required for fair weather conditions. Always assume the worst, and plan your rigging work for that day.

posted 11-18-2002 11:27 PM ET (US)            

There are numerous other posts relating to hull repair here and I still respectfully disagree that every repair is to be done as the way Taylor and Tom did it. (I noted earlier that it is a beautiful job.)

There simply will never be only one way to repair anything. Never has. New materials and methods are always being developed.

Just me thoughts.

posted 11-18-2002 11:38 PM ET (US)            

Fantastic article and a great repair!

I cringed when you explained the damage to me at Hale's. I shouted an expletive when I saw the pictures on the Site (which my two year old promptly shouted right).

That away to jump in and pull an oar Tom.

I'm lucky to know the two newest owners of my local Boston Whaler repair shop!

Matt

posted 11-19-2002 02:17 AM ET (US)            

Taylor...I drive a BMW 325iX, similar to yours but never even thought of towing my Whaler with it. I might now give it a try.

posted 11-19-2002 02:19 AM ET (US)            

Taylor...I drive a BMW 325iX, similar to yours but never even thought of towing my Whaler with it. I might now give it a try.

posted 11-20-2002 12:45 PM ET (US)            

This is the beauty of fiberglass and Boston Whalers. They are simple. Whaler's do have a unique hull construction method and thus require different approaches to the repair of them.

I agree that there is more than one way to skin a cat. I am also sure that this repair could have been accomplished with epoxy, I'm just not sure why one would choose to do so.

In order to convince me that I should use epoxy resin to repair a Whaler hull you need to convince me there is an advantage to using epoxy. I do not think there is an advantage and there may be some disadvantages, thus I recommend using polyester resin for the repair.

If you tell me that epoxy resin is stronger than polyester resin, I will not disagree with you. Epoxy is both stronger and more flexible than polyester resin. But the notion that epoxy will stick and polyester resin won't is false. If you tell me epoxy will stick better than polyester resin and that the bond of polyester resin is not sufficient then I have to say that's utter nonsense.

If you go to your local boat yard and ask them to repair your Whaler (or other fiberglass boat) they're going to use polyester resin. Ask them to use epoxy and they'll likely laugh you right out the door.

If you do make a repair using epoxy you will spend a bit more money buying the materials and you might have a harder time finding the stuff. Once the patch is in place you will have a more difficult time grinding and fairing the patch down as epoxy is typically harder that polyester. This is going to make it difficult to fair the repair with the rest of the hull.

And then you are going to have to deal with the incompatibility of gelcoat and epoxy. This can be overcome by removal of the blush with soap and water but I have heard too many reports of gelcoat no sticking well to epoxy for me to want to risk it.

I guarantee you that Taylor’s patch is not going to fall out nor will it delaminate because we used polyester resin. If Taylor will just give me the keys, I will take his boat up to Neah Bay and give his boat a thorough abuse test and see if I can get the patch to pop out. Then we’ll know. What do you say Taylor?

No really, do you think that a Whaler, which is made of polyester resin, is going to fail somehow because a small (or large) repair was made of polyester resin?

Regarding epoxy: West System epoxy may be as good as any on the market. It certainly is the best marketed epoxy, but there are many other brands of epoxy out there. There seems to be this cult of “West System” here on continuousWave which would have you believe that West System is the stuff to use.

I love epoxy. I use it all the time in my business. I have far more epoxy in my shop that polyester resin. For my part I prefer to use System Three Resins http://www.systemthree.com/index.html . I like System Three because it is a local manufacturer (their warehouse used to be just down the road from me in Ballard, though they are now in Auburn near Spectrum Color). They have a repair book (downloadable from their site) just as West System does. I have had great success with their products and always have some of their five minute epoxy on hand. It’s also sold just about everywhere in Seattle including my primary lumberyard.

If you really want the Rolls Royce of epoxy then you want to get some from Industrial Formulators of Canada. They are the makers of the famous “Cold Cure” epoxy.

posted 11-23-2002 01:12 PM ET (US)            

After a repair has been made, if the surface needs to be sanded and faired, you will find that unthickened epoxy will be removed at a much slower rate than gel coat or polyester resins. This may create additional problems in obtained a smooth surface.

However, it is typical for the surface layers of an epoxy repair to be thickended with low-density fillers, precisely to improve the ability of the epoxy to be faired.

When I initially began to use WEST System products, their widespread availability was the primary reason I chose them. Walk into most any marine store and there is a West Systems product section. (Perhaps that is due to high margins!)

The SYSTEM THREE products are also well-known. The founder of that company, Kern Hendricks, used to be very active in the USENET rec.boats.building forum and posted much great information.

posted 11-23-2002 02:35 PM ET (US)            

So if you are getting ready to tackle a job, feel free to ask questions on the forum (here perhaps) and then let us know how it goes. I'd love to see some other repair efforts and results, if only to know that that I'm not the only one to screw up their boat.

posted 12-17-2002 03:13 PM ET (US)            

"How did you feather the gelcoat in the repair on Taylor's boat? It noted that you masked the area, but did you feather inside the masked area or go full fan through the mask and then feather with sandpaper. Would appreciate your techniques."

The masking was just to prevent overspray onto other parts of the boat, such as the deck, the trailer, Tom's New Zealand Flax plants, etc. We did not use the masking as a hard stop for the new gelcoat. We left some old gelcoat unmasked and then spayed the new gelcoat over the repair, feathering by letting off the spray button as we came off the repair and over the old gelcoat. When we wet sanded all this extra spray over the old gelcoat came off, which is not too difficult.

It turned out that the transition is ends up being just about where we sanded down the old gelcoat before we started spraying.

"It was mentioned in the reference article that there was a color difference between the patched area and the original gelcoat, but that you were able to minimize this, I thought by either the way you feathered it or by where you applied the new gelcoat on the hull."

Buffing a hull tends to bring it back closer to the original color, so in the transition zone, we had a slight color difference between the new gelcoat and the old, but buffing down into the old gelcoat a little tends to minimize that, spreading the transition over a wider area. Also, the color match between the spectrum product and my boat was pretty close. I'd just buffed the boat at the start of the season too.

We did try to minimize transition zones. At the front of the repair, we had a transition zone on the smirk, but right in the corner of the bow where it curves sharply. On the top, we tried to get it in the shadow of the rail. On the bottom of the repair we went right down to the bottom of the sponson (the port keel line). Which left the aft side of the repair, where the transition is a line down from the green Washington state sticker into the bottom paint.

Waxing after the repair helped to hide color differences in the relections off the surface.

posted 12-17-2002 08:59 PM ET (US)            

No need to be afraid of this thread.

With a properly prepared surface, the sprayed on gelcoat becomes one with the existing gelcoat. The adhesion and blending is really good. I suppose if you were to spray some gel coat onto a surface that was not roughed up at all or still had some residual wax on it then adhesion might be a problem, but that was not the case here.

My impression of the color was that what we got from Spectrum was a tiny bit lighter than Taylor's boat, but that may or may not be accurate given that color perception is not my forte. Taylor and I also noted that as we sanded the existing gel coat down it appeared that the color underneath was lighter than the existing surface. This is contrary to what we had expected as in my experience with my boats the gelcoat would lighten with age as the result of exposure to the elements.

It may also be that the changing textures of roughing the gelcoat up with sand paper and then smoothing it back out and ultimately buffing it out caused the colors to seem more different than they actually were. I have not seen the finished hull in person, only in the photos but it looks good there! As Taylor notes, the placement of any transitions helps to disguise any variation.

If there were a scratch in the side of a Whaler that was not broad, I would be tempted to just use Spectrum's gel coat patch paste kit. Open up and clean out the scratch or gouge and then trowel in the paste and buff to match.

posted 12-20-2002 11:49 PM ET (US)            

I need to repair a divit in the keel. WHen the glass repair is complete do I need to gel coat if I am going to reapply the bottom paint?

Thanks,

posted 01-07-2003 10:15 PM ET (US)            

If you are going to bottom paint it anyway, there's no need to apply gelcoat.

George,

posted 01-08-2003 12:52 PM ET (US)            

quote:

---

No, 'tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church-door; but 'tis enough,'twill serve: ask for me to-morrow, and you shall find me a grave man.

---

posted 02-19-2003 10:53 AM ET (US)            

In the Preval Sprayer paragraph: He mentioned thinning the Spectrum gelcoat with 25% Acetone then adding the surfacing agent wax.

Caution: On Boston Whaler's maintenance page they caution against using acetone as a thinner as it will discolor and yellow the gelcoat over time. SpectrumColor also advises to not use Acetone.

Instead, use a reducer such as Patch Aid. Spectrum sells it as well as Mini-Craft. If you use Patch Aid, it acts as the surfacing agent and then you do not want to mix the wax with it according to Spectrum.

posted 02-24-2003 05:43 PM ET (US)            

quote:

---

We don't recommend using Acetone with the new-type gel coats of today. They are formulated with regard to California EPA regulations and may change color when Acetone is used. Therefore, we suggest using Styrene or
Patch-Aid instead.

---

I've suggested they update their instructions. Flyguy, I'll keep an eye on it.

posted 03-23-2004 11:10 PM ET (US)         

This contradicts what Tom is suggesting.

What is the correct way?

I have used Duratec High Gloss Additive for curing and it also thins the gelcoat as well.

posted 03-24-2004 12:43 AM ET (US)            

I'm no expert. I only know I have used acetone before and Taylor and I used it on his boat for his repair.

posted 03-24-2004 01:15 AM ET (US)         

While it is 18 months old and the shelf life claims to be 8 months it appears to have not broken down. I sprayed some on a piece of wood with Duratec. I want to see if the gel coat is still good before attempting to repair any nicks. After 2 hours in my basement with a temp of low 50's it was setting up. My wife is mad enough about the smell from the basement. Good idea that I did not bring it up to the kitchen to cure in a warmer enviroment.

When I opened the can today I discovered a layer of cured gel coat underneath the lid at the top of the can. The layer was almost 1/4 inch thick and had seperated into a smooth layer of the colored gel coat on top with a layer of clear rubberized materiel below. The top layer was about 10% of the total 1/4 inch thickness. The clear layer looked very much like cured clear silicone. It was very flexable.

I have about 6 ounces of gel coat out of the can and I poured it into two 3 ounce glass steril baby food jars. I knew that baby would pay off soon.

If my test on the wood sets up I will attempt the nicks once the weather brings mid 60 degrees.

posted 03-24-2004 07:11 AM ET (US)            

Not to start a holy war, but the long shelf life is one of the things I like about using epoxy. With epoxy, the two component appear to be able to sit around for the better part of one glacial epoch without going bad. The chemical reaction that cures the epoxy does not proceed until they are mixed.

posted 03-24-2004 08:47 AM ET (US)            

It was a solid mess when I opened the container. I concur with your assessment Jim...

Epoxy is a much better product. I am considering having a quart colored at the local home improvement center. I found a color chip that is a perfect match to the blue interior of my 1967 hull. If they can get close to the correct shade, I may give it a shot.

The only problem is that the formulas are designed to be used with a white base not a clear one.... Hmmmmm!!!

What are my chances of matching it?

posted 03-25-2004 12:38 PM ET (US)            

Do you have any recommendations for repairs on the bottom of the hull? It seems gravity could be an issue here. Would you allow the filler to set up more before applying it? Would you keep it in while it sets with a form? I was considering duct tape over wax paper.

Any ideas you have would be greatly appreciated.

posted 08-31-2004 05:50 PM ET (US)            

One other thing I noticed is that I'm sorry I did not include a picture between the first mash layer and the second layer photo. The text describes the process, but a picture would have been nice, the photos skip through a couple of steps. I think I must have been trying to keep resin off the camera. It would have been nice to see the matt applied over the top before sanding, and a close up of the fiberglass putty we used to fill low parts after we applied the second layer.

posted 09-01-2004 10:12 PM ET (US)         

thank you for the follow up.Again, a most impressive post.