[quote=dmgbear55]I'm having a hard time with injected epoxy repair that Ed is suggesting. A rivet acts like a wedge when it is being pulled up tight. These rivets are under both shear and tensile forces. If there is no glass structure or a significant amount of filaments in the epoxy resin to resist the wedging effect of the rivet, the epoxy will crack up just like the polyester resin did and the rivet will pull through again. This repair might work for a while, but will likely have to be revisited again before you are tired of sailing the boat.
The rivet needs to pull against sound structural glass material, hardened epoxy resin alone will not long resist the expansion forces of a rivet being pulled into place and the tensile force of the rail pulling up on the rivet. Find a way to drill new holes in sound glass, or back the rivets up by adding the inspection hatch to gain access.
Drilling additional holes in the rail to get more rivets into new sound glass structure seems to me like an easy way to make the repair last far longer. Or similarly go to 1/4" rivets in the same positions because the enlarged hole will be into sound glass structure, not to mention the dramatically increased area of the rivet and the much larger bulge this sized rivet creates is going to be really hard to pull out.
The boat is worth the effort of a sound fix.[/quote]
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