Re: filling in larger holes
Break out the grinder and clean up the glass on the hinside of the hull where the patch is to go. Make sure you also get the sides of the hole cleaned up with sandpaper. Take the grinder and taper the inside of the hole to some extent so the hole doesn't have square corners. Then wash it all with acetone. <br /><br />With the hole prepared and cleaned go to the outside of the hull and mask the entire area around the hole, leaving about an inchor so exposed right at the hole. Next wet out a square of matt that is a couple of inches larger than your hole. Place the wetted out glass over the inside of the hole. Let it set up intil it is sticky stiff. Now cut patches of glass matt or cloth the size of the hole, cut a lot of them. Begin wetting them - minimally - and inserting them in the hole. Stack them up until the hole is just about filled. Let it set up until set and then gel coat it and sand and polish to finish. Its really very easy to do.<br /><br />There is a second way that I have used that is much faster and looks almost as good. Look around inside of the boat for some panel that can be removed that exposes gelcoated glass that is not otherwise exposed. Take a core drill and drill out a plug that is the same size, or slightly larger, than the hole you want to fill. Then, using a block, hand sand the edges down until it just fits as a very tight squeeze into the hole - this tends to take about 10 minutes. Then clean the glass on the inside of the hull as before, sand it and then wash it. Now wet out the edge of the hole and press your plug into place. Immediately go into the hull and put a square of matt over the inside of the hole covering both the plug and the surrounding glass. Let it all set up and then go to the outside of the hull and wet sand it with very light paper, usually around 600 grit, and then polish it. Doing it this way usually gives an exact color match, is faster than building it up, and will be just as strong. I've done it both ways and prefer the second way if there is glass available to cut the plug from - and there always is if you look around enough.<br /><br />Thom
