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Reply to: Marginal Soft Spot on Deck - Better to Repair or Wait Until Worse?

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[quote=fxloop]Sounds like a rush job maybe? I did my first soft spot repair ever and did a cross hatch grid over a 2 sq ft area with 1/8' holes, 5-6" apart with a stopper on my hand drill bit, only going through the top layer ( about 3/16' ) and applying pre cut tape where the epoxy oozed as i went up hill on deck and it turned out solid as a rock and was easy. Keep in mind, Git-Rot stays somewhat flexible after curing. I used a bent nail to wallow out the foam in about a 1" internal radius of each hole. I used that in front of pylons. I used commercial epoxy in the rear deck area on one side - same method - and its so tough you can dive off of it. 75 holes?! that sounds super excessive... i prob did 16 holes total and forced the epoxy in very aggressively. Have a spare hobie 16 I'm about to do some of this to... thinking of using a turkey baster type syringe to really get the epoxy spread out and evenly squirted out between layers...
 You may have gotten the resin/hardener ratio off a bit? Was it really cold when you did the repair?

In general I found that the epoxy injection was rather easy to do once you prepped the area completely covering in tape before drilling, had lots of pre torn tape bits to stop leakage, small batches of epoxy in a cool location, mix thoroughly then quickly injected until it wouldn't take any more, anywhere near the soft spot and left the whole thing alone for a few days before taking off tape and razor blading off any holes that were hardened raised epoxy. A few of you're favorite beers is key here, it helps to have rock music playing during the whole process too ~ IMHO
 Have taken the carpet ride in winds over 20 MPH with my 230# buddy trapped out blasting through 2'-4' waves all summer long and the repairs are rock steady, no spreading and the hulls drain out about a cup after a 6 hr day on the water.  :evil:

Tim[/quote]

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