| Vol 3 - Issue 1 | September 1998 |
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Hull Repair Patching Small Dings with Marine Tex (tm) By David Hendrick I thought this was the weekend to do a little body work on the Maine Sale. What with the upcoming Rick White Seminar it was the perfect time to patch a few dings. I began on Thursday afternoon with a new small size (2 oz) package of white Marine Tex for $6.95 from Seven Seas Yacht Shop but available from West Marine, Marrays and other places. After cleaning the hulls well in the areas with the dings I dried them with a thorough wiping of acetone. (warning: do this outdoors in a well ventilated area :) The acetone is miscible with the water and then both liquids readily evaporate as a mixture. In mixing the Marine Tex I took a tongue depressor and scooped out a bit more of the solid part than I figured I'd need, in this case about a teaspoon and a half. I heaped it into a lump on a small piece of scrap wood. With the tongue depressor I formed a dent in the top of the lump as I do when preparing mashed potatoes to be gravied, making the dent a bit more than what I thought was a fifth the size of the lump. I then slowly poured the liquid part into the depression until I was satisfied I had about a 5:1 ratio. I just went by sight. No careful measurement. After mixing I applied the product into the dings using the same tongue depressor, smoothing it out quite roughly with a small amount of overfill. I then took a piece of aluminum foil several times the dimensions of the filled lesion and placed it over the Marine Tex, pushing it lightly with my thumbs over the repair to make a temporary form and then with a moist finger rubbing back and forth over the foil about ten times until I was satisied that the surface of the foil was smooth and contiguous with the surrounding hull. I found this easy to do for the small dings I was repairing (1 cm diameter). I then moved on to the next ding leaving the foil over the repair. As the repair began to harden I removed the foil. Then the true test came. It started to rain. When I returned the next evening it had hardened but I noticed that the largest ding was still somewhat depressed so I mixed another smaller batch of Marine Tex and repeated the process letting it dry overnight. The next morning showed the repairs to have hardened and blended in with the hull colorwise. White on white-tough match, huh? I repaired six small dings on the hull lips, a small fracture near the screw on the bow of one hull and a larger ding on the very bottom of one hull (this one needed the second treatment). I used no more than a quarter of the Marine Tex and think the total time over the two days to be about ninty minutes. Over the past several years I've repaired numberous places on my older boat and none of the repairs have separated from the fiberglass. I prefer to finish the repair before hardening but the literature with the Marine Tex says it's sandable. David Hendrick David.A.Hendrick-1@tc.umn.edu Back to Features |