A little help, please.
My Weekender has a crack in the stern block. You can see it in the attached photo. It isn't very wide, but if I pinch the bottom of the stern block I can see the crack close. Any suggestions for fixing a hairline crack like this?
I built the stern block and rubber box per the plans. You can see the eye bolts in the photo.
Bill
Hey Bill,
That doesn't look too bad. I think that I would take one of those little battery operated angle saws and gouge out a saw kerf along and just beyond the crack then fill it with epoxy. If you can get the eye bolt out, I think I would also add a wooden shoe over the repair. You would have to cut back the underlying wood the same amount that the shoe is thick, but that would be easy. You could also just put one layer of epoxy glass over the repair as additional water proofing.Â
Al Stead
i agree, if that doesnt seem strong enough, you could get a piece of "U" channel aluminum at home depot to wrap around the area, screwed in from the sides to add strength. but i'd guess the epoxy fix will work fine.
Take a wedge, like the kind used to shim up cabinets and wedge the crack open good. Leave it like this for a few days, in case it needs to dry out, then pump some straight epoxy into the crack and pull the wedge. Let it sit like this while you mix up another batch of epoxy, this time thickened with cotton flock and/or milled fibers. When this is mixed to a fairly runny consistency, wedge open the crack again and pack this goo into it, of course pulling the wedge again. Some very light clamping pressure, just to lightly close the crack and let it sit for a day. Clean off the drips, prime and paint when cured. If you have trouble packing goo into the crack, stop by a "feed store" type of business. They'll have plastic syringes, used for giving medicines to animals. They come in a bunch of sizes and are the perfect tool for this type of work. Load up the syringe and squirt it in the crack. Slightly thickened epoxy will go through these too.
Thanks, guys. I appreciate all the helpful suggestions.
I have found over the 12 years or so of correcting carpentry errors in my shoddy little boat (actually quite proud of her but I'm under no illusion) that Paul's "tough love" approach is the only way to go. I've found that since the keel was the first thing I built, with no carpentry experience, it is the part of my boat that has required the most repair, and in general I've had to resort to this kind of thing: force the cracks even wider, cut, drill. or whatever you need to do to make sure there are no voids in there. I have had good success drilling holes and using a syringe to inject epoxy into areas. I've had a leak along a chine where the fibreglass rubbed off on a rock, and I drilled into the wood inside the cabin and injected thickened epoxy until I could see it dripping out the outside of the boat. It came out in a couple more places than I was expecting, too. Another time I drilled a hole through the sole into the keel, where I suspected there was a void due to "cupping" of the boards. It was a large hole this time, drilled with a 1/2 inch spade, about halfway into the keel. Then I filled the hole with epoxy and banged a dowel into the hole. The dowel acted like a piston and forced epoxy all into the area, again until it was dripping out the bottom. That was five years ago and no cracks have re-appeared.
It's a little embarassing admitting to this, really. If you look at my boat, she looks like she popped out of a mold in a factory. But under the fancy rigging, pretty finish and expensive paint, there are the same carpentry atrocities you'll find on any boat that was built in a garage by a drunken fool with a skil-saw and a set of plans.
Epoxy and filler materials are a wood butcher's best friend. Under primer and paint, after some care feathering and fairing it out nice, no one is going to know. I'm an admitted wood butcher (many years of therapy to come to this conclusion) and finding ways to hide my sins have been gratefully accommodated with these techniques. I'm not alone either. If you dipped a brand new $50,000 car into a vat of paint stripper, you'll pull it out with dents and remnants of body filler all over it, so even the robots on the assembly line are butchers in their own way. Accept it and move on.
I'm going to get my wife to needlepoint that last post into a piece of sailcloth and frame it.