Repair help.

[kdowney50]

I am repairing a small (13 ft) sailboat. The chime where the deck and gunnel are glued together has broken loose. When I rebuilt the boat three years ago, I used liquid Nail and rivets to attach the two halves. Any handymen out there got a suggestion for a more permanent fix?

[bljones]

what is the hull made of?

[sailingdog]

Liquid nails is essentially a terrestrial version of 5200, a polyurethane adhesive...and is likely to be pretty permanent.

[kdowney50]

Knowing the hull is fiberglass would be helpful. BTW: Who makes 5200? Where can I find it?

[Freesail99]

Originally Posted by kdowney50

Knowing the hull is fiberglass would be helpful. BTW: Who makes 5200? Where can I find it?

3M makes it and at any marine store. Even some home depots carry it.

[bljones]

Thanks for the additonal info, kdowney. If liquid nails didn't do the job , then 3m 5200 won't do it either, so don't even think about buying any, because if you don't use it on this job you will be tempted to use it on another, and 5200 really has no place on a boat for 99% of the jobs it gets used for.

If you could show us some pics of the damage, we can offer some better solutions. Off the top of my head I am thinking that the rivets should be replaced with stainless steeel machine screws, fender washers and nuts, sandwiching a bead of thickened epoxy where the liquid nails was used.

[sailingdog]

While I agree that if Liquid Nails hasn't done the job, 3M 5200 probably won't do it either, and that 5200 really has very little real use on a boat, I wouldn't go with thickened epoxy, as that is worse than 5200 for most applications.

Photos would help.

[Claudia1002]

My experience comes from restoring a similarly sized fiberglass boat which had considerable damage to the hull.

I don't remember the strength of liquid nails. Have you looked at marine tex? The white, for fiberglass, is rated at 8,000 psi if I remember correctly. The marine tex for metal is gray and the strength of it is absurd.

Another factor is how the bonding surfaces were prepped and what shape the fiberglass is in that surrounds the damaged area.

I think I can picture what it is you're repairing, but I'm not 100% sure. Like was said before, photos will help.

[kdowney50]

Here are three photos of the boat. The first shows the damage on the starboard side gunnel. The hull is separated from the deck at the chime. As you can see, the adhesive has pulled loose here and one of the rivets pulled through the chime.

The next shows the port side intact. (This is how it should look)

The third is a three quarter view of the boat.

I don't know if it was just a bad spot in the repair or if I can expect this later on as the stresses of sailing twist the hull. So far, the rest of the seam looks tight.

Any thoughts on how to deal with this?

Thanks,

Kevin

Image hosting, free photo sharing & video sharing at Photobucket

[sailingdog]

I wouldn't use MarineTex, which is just a thickened epoxy putty for all intents and purposes.

Originally Posted by Claudia1002

My experience comes from restoring a similarly sized fiberglass boat which had considerable damage to the hull.

I don't remember the strength of liquid nails. Have you looked at marine tex? The white, for fiberglass, is rated at 8,000 psi if I remember correctly. The marine tex for metal is gray and the strength of it is absurd.

Another factor is how the bonding surfaces were prepped and what shape the fiberglass is in that surrounds the damaged area.

I think I can picture what it is you're repairing, but I'm not 100% sure. Like was said before, photos will help.