Luis....Bon Dia! ( I
work with many Portugues
fishing in Alaska) I have some photos of a
repair I had to make to my
Searunner. Although it is a
plywood boat, the ideas are similar. My
hull is 1/2" or 12mm thick. To make a
repair as strong as the
wood you have to "scarf" in a piece. you need to have the
wood "overlapp" without making a patch show.....
The
rule is: A scarf is 8 times as wide as the wood you are repairing. So in my example I have to take and taper or scarf the wood 4" wide. In the
photo you can see you go from full thickness down to nothing over the 4". You then build a replacement piece with the same 4" wide scarf that will mate up to this scarf. This gives you a wide glue joint, and the wood will remain the same thickness. No bumps or ridges.
The best way I found to do this, is use a circular saw (power) and set the
depth over four passes. Start at the top with 1/4 the
depth, got to 1/2 the depth, the 3/4 the depth, then full depth. Then you use a grinder (the disk I show turned out to be best for me) Or planer or belt sander. With ply wood it is easy to see how much you remove as you can follow the plys down. The saw cuts give you the depth you need. Any dips will be filled by
epoxy. It does not have to be perfect, just remove enough wood.
The wood
work will take time but will less
money to fix if it is not too big when compared to your rig. In
Mexico (warm
water, very salty) We use 10 years as a
rule to replace the wire. We are starting to use synthetic line as a replacement. We have a
racing cat in the Carribian waters right now and they are really happy with it. We can keep in touch. It would be WAY charper to ship as it is so light in weight....but you still have the darn
import fees....:-)
The last shot is the bow all fixed, it was damaged on a frinds
trailer when I was not present....what are friends for?
Look foward to reports on your
boat adventure.
Jack