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Subject: Wet Transom
Date: Saturday, February 15, 2020

Doctor,

I have a 1994 Stratos Bass boat. I love this boat but I recently found water in the transom. I have had heat lamps on it since October and it is still dripping some water. do you have a product that I could inject into the transom that would react with the wet wood and maybe counteract the effects of the water and wood rot?

I read about your CPES but don’t think that is what I am looking for since it recommends the wood is dry before applying. Any recommendations or advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you
Stacy

Stacy,

Unfortunately, I don’t know of any product that will interact with the moisture in the wood, and stop the rot. Borates will do this job, but, while I do recommend borates under certain conditions, I would not recommend using them in your situation for a couple of reasons. First, it would be difficult to infuse them everywhere without cutting open the transom quite a bit. And if you are going to do that, you might as well deal with the wet wood directly. Second, there is almost always delamination with wet wood, and the borates will not do anything to address this issue.

Drying the wood, and fixing them with epoxies is the normal way of treating wet, delaminated, and rotted transoms. There are several ways of drying the wood. The fastest is setting up a vacuum system. This is expensive. Flooding the wood with acetone or denatured alcohol is another common way to deal with the moisture. Not as fast as holding vacuum, but cheaper and easier.

Once the wood is dry, then epoxies can be used to re-laminate the wood. Depending on the size and location of the damage, it can be easy or quite difficult to accomplish this. We would be happy to help you figure out the best method of doing this. It would likely be easier and quicker to do this via telephone. Please give us a call if you are interested in discussing things further.

Doc

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