In the past I had just compressed the lug back into position and glassed over it. This time I am taking a little more dramatic approach. I ground the top of the lug down so that I could completely remove the metal bit. I was a little surprised in that mine is made from a cut piece of bronze strap. But what I had always suspected was shown to be the case in that this square bit had saw cut sharp edges and corners. Not a good thing at all in a high load area. Then I took this lovely little devil over to the grinder and rounded over all of the top edges, rounded the corners on the outside of the lug and then ran the whole thing over the wire wheel to clean it up. Epoxy will bond to this thing when clean, but it is the glass that provide the real strength and without those knife sharp edges to shear the glass I expect the results will be far better.
So then I took my small right angle die grinder and removed all of the edges in the glass on the top side this time around. That even opened up a small hole in front of the lug. So I will be doing glass work from inside and outside this time around too. I could conceivably skip the work from the inside, but I am wondering if flexing is also contributing to this problem , so will fill the hole from the inside and stiffen the underside of the lug.
After all of that I will bed the lug in thickened epoxy. Then glass this thing over again. Since this is not the visible side of the hull I think it is going to just get painted, but not faired in. So a close look will show this repair. It is tempting to redo all of these lugs in this same way to save future grief, but ............
Now the question is if there is any of that dang Perfection paint in the shop.
Anyway, if you ever crack one of these lugs, do yourself a favor and dig it out and grind those sharp edges off the metal part of the lug.
Edited by dmgbear55 on Jul 15, 2017 - 05:41 PM.
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dg
NACRA 5.2 #400
This End Up
Original owner since 1975
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