Small Hull Repairs

                                                      Small Hull Damage

The plan is to paint the hull above and below the water line this summer.

Above the water line with a finished coat and below the water line just the protective coat , anti fouling will be added before the boat will be returned to the water.

The painting process will be a different chapter in this blog.

Before is started to sand the hull I checked it once more for other hull damages.

Although I was aware of them I decided this time to repair them in a way which is in my opinion better than as original planned.

The original plan was to fill the small 5-10 mm deep holes with putty of any other kind of wood filler.

I'm afraid that over time water will get behind the filler resulting that the wood will rot away with the chance of more damage to the hull than the present small holes.

It was decided to drill the bad wood out and replace it with a wooden plug which would be glued into the hull.

First in the center of the wasted wood a small hole was drilled as guidance.

The second step was to drill the hole on the size of the plug .

The plug was fitted and glued in.

The biggest challenge was where do I get a mahogany plug of  +/- 21 mm and a wood drill of 21 mm.

The size of the plug was decided by the hole saw I had, as we all know the trick of the hole saw is the drill in the middle which would have me ended up with a plug with a nice round hole in the middle, something one would like to prevent.

What I did was that I placed the holes saw in a stationary drill.

The next step was that the drill bit was kept as high as possible into the hole saw to prevent that the plug would get a deep hole in the middle.

The wood for the plug was chosen thicker than the actual thickness of the hull resulting that the plug on the inside cut be cut to length after the glue had cured.

As we all know the hole saw diameter is decided by the outside dimension and not the inside dimension.

To get a plug which fitted I first drilled with the hole saw the plugs, than measured the plugs and started to look for a wood drill of the same dimensions which I did not had nor could buy.

To make sure that the plug would fit tight in the hole I grinded a wood drill, as in the picture to a smaller dimension. Both side were grinded till the desired dimension was reached.

This resulted that the home made wooden large plug would fit tight in the drilled hole.