Kaholee Refit | January 9, 2007

After being tied up on other projects and office work for most of the morning, I spent the afternoon beginning the next steps in the deck preparation process.

First, I used a 2" Roloc disc sander to dish out the various old fastener holes in the deck that needed filling.  Since most of the deck hardware was to be replaced, and because there wasn't necessarily a reason to be held to pre-existing locations for some of the other items, most of the old holes needed to be filled and faired.  For example, all the old pulpit and stanchion locations were to be changed, and with new genoa tracks anticipated, the old locations all needed to be repaired.

I ground out each hole in a roughly circular dish, and appropriately deep to contain filler and help fair in the areas later.  I worked my way around the sidedecks, leaving the coachroof and cockpit for another day. 

Fortunately, most of the deck wasn't badly crazed or cracked, but in some areas there were stress cracks emanating from the old hardware locations, and to the extent reasonable I ground out these cracks for repair as well.

Once I had the initial grinding done, I switched to a larger grinder and sanded more extensively in a few areas that required additional treatment.  Specifically, the old stanchion bases had compressed the decks somewhat, and had also caused the gelcoat beneath to begin to fail, so I ground out larger areas in these locations, as well as around the old genoa track location, and several places where the gelcoat was failing, such as behind the coaming blocks and beneath the old wooden winch pads outboard of the cockpit.

         

         


Afterwards, I vacuumed up the dust, and then cleaned the decks throughout with acetone.  Then, I applied tape over the bottoms of the holes to be filled, so that  the epoxy filler wouldn't be forced through the holes into the interior, and prepared to fill the holes.

I mixed epoxy putty using microballoons and cabosil, and troweled it on where necessary using a plastic squeegee.  Filling and fairing is a multi-step process that requires several applications, with sanding between, in order to achieve a fair and smooth surface.

         

         

There were a few larger holes through the deck, where old deck fills and other things had been installed. Filling and repairing the larger holes required additional steps, but at this point I began by filling the entire openings with the thickened epoxy mixture.  This creates a "plug" that seals the hole; later steps will include additional grinding and application of fiberglass on either side of the opening.

I left the epoxy to cure overnight.


Total Time on This Job Today:  3.75 hours

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