Filling Hardware Holes on an Angled Deck

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jhenson
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Filling Hardware Holes on an Angled Deck

Post by jhenson »

I am prepping the holes over the cabin where the handrail screws pass through. They reside outboard where the cabin top has a substantial angle for drainage. I am excavating the new core around the holes with a modified allen wrench cut to a chisel profile, with the goal of filling them and re-drilling for isolation of the core. It has occurred to me that the deck has enough angle that when filled to the lip of the lower edge of the hole, I may not be able to avoid a hole on the upper edge, thus exposing that side of core to water intrusion. Is there a trick to these type of sloped holes? Maybe several layers of masking tape over the hole?

Thanks,

Joe
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Re: Filling Hardware Holes on an Angled Deck

Post by Zach »

Run some thin resin in to the hole until the hole is totally full. Go down stairs and take off your tape, and catch the snotty drippings.

Wipe down the spot with acetone. Mix up some cabosil really thick, almost dusty or peanut butter. Put a dollop on the middle of your spreader and smoosh it up into the hole. Poke your head out on deck, and see when the cavity is totally filled and a snot ball is sitting on top of the deck.

Pull the area tight with your spreader, wipe with acetone and stick a a piece of mylar packing tape on it. Leave it alone and don't try to smash it flat.

Go on deck, and scoop up the excess and leave the hole slightly over full.

Your epoxy totally saturated the surface of the area you cored out, and put in place filler that is thick enough that gravity is irrelevant... and packed the void until all the air in it is out, as shown by a clean stream of the goo out the other side.

Leave both sides just a hair proud, so you can sand them flush instead of having to come back and refill them. You'll end up having to sand the areas anyway, as tape almost never lays flat enough not to have grooves of epoxy left over.

100-120 if there is a lot leftover, 180-220 as you get down to the last haze. Don't do 36-80 grit unless you are at that stage everywhere else... no sense putting scratches in that are hard to cover. Time saved on the back end vs instant gratification of not having to sand overhead at this stage...
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Quetzalsailor
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Re: Filling Hardware Holes on an Angled Deck

Post by Quetzalsailor »

The most important bit of the previous answer is the filler that makes the epoxy thick. I don't know what Cabosil is, but if you will be redrilling and mounting hardware through the holes, the filler you choose should be intended for strength. If you're just filling and moving the mounting somewhere else, it matters less. I use West products and habitually use their microfiber filler.

By your description of hogging out the core to make room for the epoxy, it sounds like you're thinking about strength as well as sealing the core. With structural filler, you'll end up with an annulus of reinforced epoxy and a sealed core. If you're just filling and there will be nothing there again, simply drill out the hole to ensure that there's no sealant in the bore and fill 'em up with nonstructural thickened epoxy. I countersink the hole to remove the shattered gelcoat so that the filler effectively starts out with a feather edge.
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Re: Filling Hardware Holes on an Angled Deck

Post by mitiempo »

Cabosil is colloidal silica. West # 406.
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Rachel
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Re: Filling Hardware Holes on an Angled Deck

Post by Rachel »

I'm not sure I totally followed Zach's description, but I'll put in another vote for clear packing tape and thickened epoxy filler (I also typically use collodial silica). I like to use the clear tape on the bottom side, because you can look up through it to see if there are any voids. It comes right off when you want it to. I have used it to smush the top as well, on occasion.

Another option for the top is to leave the filler mounded proud and then take a chisel to it in the green stage to flatten it.

Just thinking... one difference to when I've done it is that I drill up from the bottom with a larger hole saw (but not through the top skin), so I have a "wide open" hole to fill and not a slot all the way around like you will. I guess Zach's technique must have taken that into account :)

Another possibility, just in case the others don't work, is another way I've done it (but not on a slanted hole). I taped around the top hole with blue tape, just to guard against overglop. Then I taped the hole on the inside of the boat with clear packing tape. I loaded up a syringe with as small a tip as I could still get the thickened epoxy to go through, poked it up through the center of the bottom tape, and then filled the hole, letting it slightly overfill the top (but.... this might give you a droozling problem). Then I withdrew the syringe and put another piece of clear tape over the hole, quick-like, sort of like a nurse with a cotton ball after they give you a shot (this piece was pre-cut and stuck somewhere handy, ready to apply).

What was nice about this method was that it was like filling the lower unit on an outboard motor - no problem with trapped air that would lead to later settling and thus hollows. I was thinking this might help with the side slots you will have. I can see it might not exactly work for you, but it's all about getting ideas and then adapting them for your purposes, right? :)

Rachel
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Re: Filling Hardware Holes on an Angled Deck

Post by todd gustafson »

Rachel,

We are close to re-attaching all deck hardware on "Rosie" after our very long paint job on the deck...

I have a question, why do you fill holes from the bottom rather than the top? Is it because your drilling a oversized hole? Is this the case for all the thru deck holes?

Thanks
Todd
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Re: Filling Hardware Holes on an Angled Deck

Post by Figment »

Joe,

(good to hear from you)
Save this one until she's afloat, and fill the holes on a nice breezy day when you can stay on one tack until the goo cures.

When I don't have the patience for that, I use Rachel's method, though I've never bothered with the fill-from-the-bottom part.
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Re: Filling Hardware Holes on an Angled Deck

Post by Duncan »

Rachel wrote:...overglop...droozling...
I think these are charming additions to the language - I could tell exactly what the consistency of the goop must have been, by the way it glopped and droozled!
jhenson wrote: Is there a trick to these type of sloped holes?
Did you consider making your excavation holes larger, so they extend to the edge of the good balsa on the high side? With the hole open like this, you have more options than you do when you are trying to fill the hidden upper cavity, such as building a dam to fill the high side.

Alternatively (without enlarging the holes), could you do a first "pour" to fill most of the hole, then drill a small hole at the highest point of the upper cavity? This would be an 'injection point', a la Rachel, but on top, to fill the air space remaining after the first shot of epoxy.
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Re: Filling Hardware Holes on an Angled Deck

Post by Quetzalsailor »

The only time there will be a drippy mess is when you are wetting out the hole. I vacillate between taping a bib around the hole and just sneaking up on the hole with a Q-tip, small stick or nail.

The filled filler will be conveniently thick and only needs a little tape encouragement to stay put.

The only time you actually fill with neat epoxy is when the cracks are too small to allow penetration, and even then top off with filled epoxy after the crack has taken all it will.
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Re: Filling Hardware Holes on an Angled Deck

Post by mitiempo »

I tape the hole underneath. Then mix epoxy, fill hole, and let sit a few minutes. Using syringe, remove epoxy and mix with silica to thicken. Fill hole from the top with thickened epoxy and tape over quickly.
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Rachel
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Re: Filling Hardware Holes on an Angled Deck

Post by Rachel »

Hi Todd,

The time I filled from the bottom I was doing every deck hardware hole on an entire boat, so I had a lot of holes to fill. I started working from the top but then I would always get some little air bubble (perhaps unseen) and then as it cured the whole thing would settle and leave a depression that I would have to come back and fill again.

I had just been changing the lower unit oil on my outboard, where you fill from the lower hole until it comes out the upper hole, to avoid air-bubble problems and so I thought "Hmmm......."

I did the rest of the holes from the bottom through the tape and was able to get them all done in one pass, which was nice (because my boat was in a friend's shop, which was only heated at certain times and was a four hour round-trip drive from my house).

I have since also filled holes from the top, so it just depends on the situation. Sometimes even from the top I will use a syringe and then start with it on the bottom of the hole and then slowly bring it up while expelling its contents. I've also used the thicker-epoxy-and-smush-with-tape technique. I guess I might have a little less confidence in that one for a hole with small entrance holes and tricky side-corridors (but maybe Zach's method pre-filled those). I've always had a larger hole on the bottom, so I could see what was going on through the clear tape.

(The reason I usually drill the holes from the bottom is that on the boats I've had, the decks have been in nice shape/and/or the hardware did not have a large base; whereas the overhead in the boat was just painted fiberglass -- and a backing plate would often cover that anyway. So what I did was drill from below with a hole saw. The arbor bit would go all the way through and enlarge the through-hole enough to make an annulus around the fastener, and the hole saw would make the wider bottom hole -- it's easy to stop it at the upper skin. I've usually had enough room to drill from below, and I don't have someone else paying me for my time, so I've tended to do it that way most of the time.)

At any rate, it's nice to have a few different ways to tackle them :)

Rachel
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Re: Filling Hardware Holes on an Angled Deck

Post by todd gustafson »

Rachel,

Thanks for the info, all of our hardware is off so it's going to be a clean slate, we can do any method.

We also have the hand rail in the coach roof at an angle as this post is questioning......... Bring on thee drill and epoxy....:)
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Re: Filling Hardware Holes on an Angled Deck

Post by jhenson »

Thanks for the replies everyone! Very Helpful.

Joe
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Re: Filling Hardware Holes on an Angled Deck

Post by Zach »

I pre-fil the hole from the top with resin, as peanut butter consistency epoxy alone doesn't wet out the balsa wood around the hole.

I did a few different tests on a piece deck that I needed to pull up, as a stop gap to keep water from getting down below. Filling from the top with a ketchup consitecy worked well for things staying put when you seperate the top skin, on things that are level. Peanut butter works well if you pre-wet the hole, otherwise it doesn't really bond to the surrounding core when stressed. It is water tight... but not wet enough that when it gives up its resin to the balsa core beside it that it stays bonded in place. The peanut butter stuff almost goes dusty right at the line where it is glued together.

The real thick stuff in holes that were not prewet stayed stuck to the fiberglass skin, like little epoxy dowels.

I like to fill from the bottom, because the excess epoxy stays on deck. It might be half a golf balls worth of excess putty on deck, it takes what it takes to replace al the air in the void with epoxy. (the excess will have air poccekts initially, and then turn to solid epoxy when the air is out of the void.) Once that happens, taping over the underside gives you support so that when you wipe off the top you don't have anything to sand flat. Just squeedgeeing the top forces a bit back down the hole and out the bottom.

I like to use packing tape to smooth the top, and to limit the amount of excess to sand off on deck. It is already flat and shiny when you peel it off.

Zach
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