Flour doesn't help much, but long fibers do. If you want increased tensile
strength, then use glass fiber ...but keep in mind that it has to be
oriented fiber, oriented in the direction of the load. In other words, pick
the right cloth. Once you've got the right cloth, then the epoxy's sheer
strength will be the primary limiting factor. PC Ford is always cranky, but
he's right a lot more often than he's wrong. Hmmm... trying to think of a
remark that he made that was wrong. Can't think of any. Don't let the
grumpy ol' man treatment get to you. But as he stated, epoxy is not a good
wood replacement if tensile strength is what you are after. Epoxy is far
superior however, if what you are looking for is compressive strength ...if
comparing to wood's compression strength sideways to the grain. Not sure
how they compare if comparing wood's compressive strength when compressed
endways. Wood might be better. Certainly it'll be more forgiving if any
deflection occurs.

Brian D



"ahoy" wrote in message
...
So does adding wood flour or sawdust as a thickener improve the
bending strength for something like this? I've been wetting some hatch
sliders out for saturation and then building up the gone places with
flour/epoxy. It also seems to blend in better cosmetically. The splash
boards look like too complicated a carpentry job for me. Oh, and
please keep up the petty bickering,..

On 10 Oct 2005 09:01:04 -0700, wrote:

Hi

It is better to cut away more than just the rotten wood, so a new piece
glued with Epoxy will carry the loads ------- even with a bad fit it is
better to replace the bad wood with new and _then use the Epoxy to what
it is perfect for, as glue. What's so good about Epoxy is just that
even a bad fit don't matter that much as with other glues ,in fact I
think, it is often better to replace the rotten wood with Epoxy rather
than even thinking about using it as reinforcement for epoxy. With spot
repairs it is also better to have a hand router with a copy ring and a
few standard patches that fit with the router template.
Use Epoxy like that and the repairs will last longer than the boat.