The story goes like this. You may or may not have seen the video where we collected my friends new boat (new to him) from Swanwick. Well, the survey turned up some bits which were sorted but there are some small non essential jobs to be done.
One of them looked simple, just screwing back in some screws which had pulled out of the cockpit door hinges. You can see the damaged part in the first picture. It turns out the doors are hollow, quite well made, sorry I dont have a photo of the inside but the glassing and bi axial mat used was to a high standard, but typically of nearly all modern GRP boats the doors were just screwed in with simple self tapping screws straight into the 4mm thick gel and glass structure. Screwing the screws back in was not actually an option simply that the holes were bigger that the screw threads now. Plus on the other door the screws were about to pull out as well.
The original screws were long enough to stick though the door glass by about 4mm, I had some marine ply at home so I thought oh thats easy I'll cut some small oblong pieces and resin them in. Then I thought the better route might be to get some small M4 bolts with counter sunk heads. However as you can see from two other photos with my camera upside down in the fender lockers, where the hinges were attached to the boat, that option was only good if you were 2ft tall with tiny hands, because I couldn't see a way of bolting the doors onto the hinges without taking the hinges off the sides of the fender lockers first.
So back to plan A and glassing in the fillets. I seem to remember fibre glassing was a lot easier and less messy when I was younger and I didn't get as many bubbles either. I started by using glass fibre tape, it stuck ok but bubbled off in small area's. Then used some matt and that worked much better and provided a great finish. I managed to let the resin run into the holes ready for drilling out to size.
This is where it could have gone disastrously wrong. When it was all dry, if I didn't drill the holes out in exactly the right position (you all know what happens when you drill a hole in a slippery surface, if the drill bit doesn't bite it might slip off to one side. As there is no give in gel coat and not much in fibre glass if the holes are out the door could crack.
So very slowly and gingerly I started the drill off, first few done and gaining confidence I (and I expect you've all been here) started to press harder and speed up. Then a little voice in my head said.....slowwwww down!
Long story short and to my absolute amazement, the went back perfectly, I could feel the screws bite into the wood and all was well, better than when they were originally fitted.....thank goodness. And just for good measure I had some Maguiars oxidiser cut and some of their wax, so took off all the scuff marks etc. and gave them a wax coat, its certainly great stuff to use.
- Rear doors before repair.jpg (89.87 KiB) Viewed 16966 times
- Doors 4.jpg (179.01 KiB) Viewed 16966 times
- Doors 3.jpg (149.15 KiB) Viewed 16966 times
- Doors 1.jpg (194.4 KiB) Viewed 16966 times
- Doors 2.jpg (206.36 KiB) Viewed 16966 times
