Subject: Treatment Recommendation (rotten planks)
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 2000I am using your products to repair a rotten area on the external side planks of my wooden sailboat. Following your earlier instructions, I cleaned out most of the loose rotten wood and was left with an area approx. 36" long X 6" high with rot penetrating nearly through the planks in some places (1-2 inches?). Anyway, I drilled 1/4" holes above the rotten area and gave both the holes and the rotten area a good soaking of CPES. I have two questions:
1) Should I use a paint brush and cover the treated area with your Layup and Laminating Resin before using your filler material, or should I just use the filler?
In cases such as yours (and we have more than one on our old tug) I always go back and put a layer of the L&L Resin over top of the CPES-treated wood. This bonds strongly to the wood, and then the filler in turn bonds with the L&L Resin. What this does is seep into the wood and add considerable tensile strength. I usually also will use a turkey baster, pop the bulb off, pour in some L&L Resin, and inject this into the drilled access holes. This can be a little time-consuming, because you need to inject the resin, and then keep coming back and re-injecting as long as the level drops. Eventually the L&L Resin level will be just below the surface, and I then fill that area with the filler.
2) The rotten area involved more than one plank, so I have an area to be treated that covers all of one plank and part of other planks adjacent to it. Because of the extensive damage I can no longer tell where the seam between planks is. Can I just patch and fill the whole area and not worry about the "seam"? I remember reading somewhere that you said to not let any Lay-up Resin get into the seams.
Generally this is true about keeping the L&L Resin out of the seams. Much depends on the size of the boat and the thickness of the planks. Let's discuss this further.
I can email you a picture of the problem area if that would help, just let me know what picture file format you want.
Thanks.
Bill W.
Bill,
Yeah, for sure the picture would be helpful. Send in jpeg format please. Then I'm looking at the same thing you're looking at. We can discuss.
Doc