[quote=dmgbear55]You are cooking with gas now. Since you need to work the repair on both sides of the bulkhead you need to decide how you want to gain more access. First breath a couple of times, then decide if you want to add an inspection port forward of the main beam and work through it, or to slip off the forward deck and have lots of room to work. There are lots of good and recent posts and images in the gallery on the process of taking the deck off looks like. The work can be done either way. You may also want to invert the hull so that gravity helps with your layup work. That seems a little awkward, but wet glass wants to move.
The existing glass tube was formed around cardboard, so foam pipe insulation or something similar would provide the form you need to glass over. Then an idea I just had may be of interest or an option to consider and that is to use clear packing tape stretched over your newly cut hole on the outside of the hull. Then working from the inside layup a very light 6 oz. over that tape and let it cure. Once that has cured you can remove the tape and you will have something firm enough to let you do the rest of your glass work followed by fairing. Don't worry if this first layup is a little irregular, you can sand out any bulges and just keep reducing the size of any holes that might open up.
The final glass work around my cradles (which only had cracking issues) probably extends about 4" beyond the cradle, the fairing in my case extends 8" or more. With my shiny new paint if you are looking straight down the length of the hull you can see this fairing. I would expect that your final repair with fairing would extend in the 10"+ range. It depends on which side of the hull you do most of your reinforcement. I decided that working on the outside was massively easier and that I could live with the fairing.
I think I would also suggest that the repair be done using epoxy. Bond strength is really important in these kinds of repairs and there is lots of good information about this kind of repair using epoxy.
You are on your way, making that first cut was the hardest part. Save that little bit of stainless plate that tried to save your hull from the hole you are now dealing with. You are going to want to reinstall it.[/quote]
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