Originally Posted by minaret (Post 1217745)

Matt by itself, or Matt sandwiched between layers of roving or in the form of stitch Matt? I doubt you've successfully done a Matt only layup with regular starch binder and epoxy.

Originally Posted by CharlieCobra (Post 1218501)

Oh HELL no, Mat by itself? No way.. We just did a custom stern thruster for a boat and our layup schedule was seven, interwoven layers of mat and roving per layup and vacuum bagged at a time. We would never just use mat.:banghead::banghead:

Originally Posted by Searanger50 (Post 1217949)

So - to put the fox amongst the the chickens - which is best to repair the holes left in the hull when disused through hulls are removed?

Kevin.

Originally Posted by minaret (Post 1218316)

If you do repairs to the hull in epoxy, you are forced to finish in paint instead of doing a Gelcoat repair. Why turn a $200 repair into a $20k full paint job? Unless the boat is already painted instead of gelcoated, it makes no sense. Even then I'd only do it for very small repairs, as unless the boat is built in epoxy the dissimilar flex rates will cancel out the superior bonding when considering delam. A big epoxy repair will be much stiffer than the poly hull around it, creating stress risers right at the bond edge of the repair where you don't want it.

Originally Posted by egent (Post 1220164)

When rebedding deck hardware, I have seen recommendation of digging out the deck core a bit and filling in with epoxy then redrilling the hole before bedding and bolting the hardware back down. In reading this thread, is epoxy right for this or would something else be better to use?

Just for the reference, my boat is an 1978 C&C 36