Drying out the Core

[rayncyn51]

Can anyone tell me how to dry out the core of a delaminated deck without ripping the boat apart? The deck is solid. The surveyor believes that the failure is recent enough that rot hasn't set in yet, and suggested epoxy injection as a cure. From what I've read about epoxy injection, the core should be dry. The boat will be spending the winter in dry storage in North Carolina.

[tommays]

IMHP you cant dry it

And if it was in there long enough to delaminate it was in there a long time

People do all kinds of tricks like drilling small holes and spinnining things to to chew up the wet material and get it out and then inject epxoy

[NOLAsailing]

The drill and fill method is purely a band-aid - and not a good one at that. If the core is wet enough to separate the bond, then it's very wet. If there is any softness at all in the deck, then it's mush. There's no easy way around it, unfortunately. The drill and fill method will only make a proper repair that much harder when you have to deal with all the little epoxy plugs. I may have a photo of what the deck looked like on my Triton when I recored to properly fix an area that I previusly attempted to drill and fill; I'll post it in a bit if I can find it.

EDIT: Here's the photo. Not the best, but you can see a lot of the plugs: these were hard to remove for a clean surface for recoring.

[tommays]

Git"-Rot® is a unique two-part liquid epoxy that saturates and restores original strength to wood by penetrating the rot. Not necessary to remove loose rotted fibers. Wood must be dry.


I allways find the add

[rayncyn51]

I've used Git-Rot restoring the window sashes of an old house. 'Dry' is still the key word, which brings me back to the original question... how to get it dry. I've read about heat lamps and vaccuum.

[NOLAsailing]

Ray - you'll never dry it out. Or, if you do, you'll spend months with a tarp and heat lamp and still have only a marginal repair.

You'll have to cut into wet core to know what I'm talking about. It holds A LOT of water.

[sailingdog]

Forget about trying to dry it out... you're much better off doing a re-core, since it will be simpler and neater in many ways... it will also be far stronger. The inject epoxy idea blows chunks... and leaves an ungodly mess. Don't do it, especially if the area in question is larger than ONE SQUARE FOOT. It's not worth it.

[rayncyn51]

Thanks for all the input! I was looking for a winter project anyway ;-)

[sander06]

If you're looking for a winter project, come on over and shovel our driveway!

Good luck with the recore and take some pictures so the we can all gain experience (and entertainment) from the process.

[adamtroyg]

my survey said there was some moisture, but all i needed to do was rebed everything on my deck and it would eventually dry. I have no delamination. was considering running my dehumidifier in the boat too. am i lying to myself to think this would fix this situation?