[dorourke]

I just posted a thread for moldy teak, I found that to be the least of my problems today.

I found a soft spot on the starbord bow of my boat that has a balsa core sandwich. I read a while ago about drilling several holes from the inside of the cabin about the size of surgical tubing and rigging a shop vac with the tubing to vacumm or suck the moisture out of the core. What I don't remember is what to use to replace the saturated balsa's fiber to recondition the core. I know once balsa is rotted you can't do anything to repair it, I did hear of a technique that saturated the balsa with a sort of chemical to reconstitute the core itself and not the balsa.

Did anyone here of such a thing? I guess the way it goes is;

you leave the vacumm going for several minutes in one hole (thirty to fortyfive minutes) then go to the next hole and repeate until all the holes have been vacummed, then you use surgical tubing with one end in one hole and the the loose end in a container of this very thinned epoxy or something of that nature while still vacumming until you see the fluid seeping thru to the tubing.

Sorry for the long winded description, I wish I was paying more attention when I read the article a few years back. I am bent on getting this fixed and all advise will greatly be appreciated. Oh yea!, I did find the source of the problem and am on the path of fixing that too.

Dennis