I have several places in the coachroof of my cat that are delaminated.
Two are soft (i.e., wet), one is crunchy (i.e. dry). It's composed of
balsa between layers of fiberglass. I have very little fiberglass
experience, but would still like to repair these myself and was
wondering:

1) where I can get some instruction (lower Chesapeake Bay in Virginia).
2) is it reasonable to ask a fiberglass repair person (I'll pay) to
repair one while I watch to learn. Then I'll do the other repairs. If so,
how do I find this person?
3) can you offer some helpful advice.

Thanks in advance for your replies.

Ed

Ed,

The first thing you have to do is get familiar with the brothers
Gougeon. They started the West System stuff becuase they love boats.

Go to a local Boat/West store and find a copy of "Fiberglass Boat Repair
& Maintenance" I think you can get it real cheap. Whatever any of
their book cost you, it will be the best money you ever spent on a boat.

The first thing you will have to do is open it up to dry it out. There
is no shortcut that I have seen that was dependable. If you can open up
the inside - so much the better. The core can be replaced over head
just fine, and works real well if you can do a vacuum bag job on it.

When you go to start the project, buy the good stuff and espectially the
pump set. I have now been using it for a number of decades and have
never had a mix failure.

Think about it.... If you go to any glassshop/yard for this work, you
will pay at least 70$us/mh. So, replace a sqft of core from outside
with no finish work will be ~300$ (280 labor + 20 material). You can
buy a good collection of tools and materials for that much. When you
are done (you are never actually done working on a boat you like) you
have the tools for the another job and enough material left over so that
many other small jobs are "free".

You will have a very hard time finding a glass guy that will be
interested in having you there. Not because of a secrets, but because he
is not interested in teaching (more on that later).

I friend had a sign in his shop that said-
Bench work rates:
Standard = $15/hr
If you Watch = $25/hr
If you help = $30/hr
(this was quite a while ago)

You might try the local community colleges and trades schools to find if
one has an appropriate class that you can get into. As I tried to make
the point above, you can put a lot of money into this and none of it
will be wasted.

If you can, try to get quotes or even estimates for this work just to
set you at ease. If the quote is free, it will be incomplete and
remember that estimates are always lowballs.

Good Luck and if I can be more help, I'm here a lot.

By the by, I did replace 20sqft of core in the hull and deck of my S2-7.9

(just for reference)
http://www.westsystem.com/
002-550 Fiberglass Boat Repair & Maintenance

Matt Colie
Lifelong Waterman, Licensed Mariner and Pathological Sailor


Oysters8 wrote:

I have several places in the coachroof of my cat that are delaminated.
Two are soft (i.e., wet), one is crunchy (i.e. dry). It's composed of
balsa between layers of fiberglass. I have very little fiberglass
experience, but would still like to repair these myself and was
wondering:

1) where I can get some instruction (lower Chesapeake Bay in Virginia).
2) is it reasonable to ask a fiberglass repair person (I'll pay) to
repair one while I watch to learn. Then I'll do the other repairs. If so,
how do I find this person?
3) can you offer some helpful advice.

Thanks in advance for your replies.

Ed

On Sun, 12 Sep 2004 10:14:34 -0400, Matt Colie wrote:

[snip]

I friend had a sign in his shop that said-
Bench work rates:
Standard = $15/hr
If you Watch = $25/hr
If you help = $30/hr
(this was quite a while ago)

I've seen this sign, or variants many times. Sometimes it also says:

If you worked on it first = $45/hr

[rest of message snipped]

--Mac

I'm in the middle of doing the same repair on my sailboat. I have the
entire interior removed from the boat as I had rotted bulkheads as
well. I used an angle head air die grinder with a rotozip ultra bit in
it. The bit looks like a straight shaft with a very coarse cross hatch
pattern in it. I found nothing that cuts the interior fiberglass
easier or more accurately. After removal of the interior layer of
fiberglass, the rotted and wet balsa was easily removed with a hammer
and chisel. Below the balsa core was the glue that was used to adhere
the balsa to the outer shell. Grind that off. I attempted vacuum
bagging to apply pressure to the new balsa core to the outer shell,
but I could never get it to seal. In the end I found that I could get
good adhesion with epoxy thickened with cabosil. I pressed the balsa
into place and held it either by hand or propped it up until the epoxy
started to kick off. Then came the fiberglass. I used 18-8 stitch mat.
It's heavy and hard to wet out, but one layer appears to be enough. I
used thickened epoxy to keep the overhead peices from sagging.

Before starting this project I read a lot of articles on the internet.
Do a search for "balsa core repair"


Oysters8 wrote in message news.com...
I have several places in the coachroof of my cat that are delaminated.
Two are soft (i.e., wet), one is crunchy (i.e. dry). It's composed of
balsa between layers of fiberglass. I have very little fiberglass
experience, but would still like to repair these myself and was
wondering:

1) where I can get some instruction (lower Chesapeake Bay in Virginia).
2) is it reasonable to ask a fiberglass repair person (I'll pay) to
repair one while I watch to learn. Then I'll do the other repairs. If so,
how do I find this person?
3) can you offer some helpful advice.

Thanks in advance for your replies.

Ed