Carvel hull fairing

[brownings1]

I understand that a fairly well known specialist wooden boat repair and maintenance yard often does a complete West system epoxy/microlite fairing 'skim' over the whole of the hull of older carvel wooden boats (only the part above the waterline I should emphasize) and as a result achieves a very impressive hull finish when painted with a single pot polyurethane paint (usually Skipper's Topkapi). Perhaps this isn't quite the 'done thing', but if it achieves on a slightly 'tired' wooden boat the same result that traditional seam-filling/fairing methods are laboriously trying to obtain, but is in fact possibly quicker, probably better looking (OK, perhaps too much so), longer lasting, and certainly less future maintenance-intensive, is it necessarily 'wrong'?

I might have opened Pandora's box here but I'd be very interested in the views of others!

PS This question was included elsewhere but I thought it would be better to open it as a new thread.

 

[Poignard]

What happens when the boat "works" and cracks appear along the seams and rabbet lines and the water gets in behind the epoxy?

 

[Porthandbuoy]

You might get away with it with a splined hull, but I'd be very wary of a caulked & stopped hull treated this way. Accelerated rot would be my bet.

 

[Bajansailor]

Here in Barbados the few establishments that sell epoxy products do a roaring trade in flogging epoxy and aerosil powder to owners of traditional carvel planked fishing vessels, to use for filling and fairing the seams in their planks - both above and below the waterline.
These owners (and their shipwrights) are a very conservative bunch however (like all fisherfolk really), and do not embrace new fangled products and change immediately.
Hence the standard and accepted method of caulking a timber fishing vessel here now is to first whack in as much cotton as you can (oakum would be preferable I think) with an iron and a big mallet, and then pay the seams with epoxy putty made up with aerosil (or sawdust), rather than traditional methods.
Nobody seems too fazed about having to regularly repeat this process when the epoxy drops out, or planks split......
I have tried to suggest (to deaf ears, with my surveyor's hat on) that it should be either 'all or nothing' where epoxy is involved - ie either build the whole boat using epoxy, while ensuring that every bit of wood is glued together - or use traditional methods exclusively. All sorts of things can go wrong with a 'half and half' approach.

In a similar vein, very few builders here ever use any bedding compound in way of two pieces of timber nailed or screwed (ie not glued) together - a splosh of enamel paint on each surface is considered to be sufficient - and then the owners are scratching their heads when they find a nice rotten band of timber behind rubbing strakes on the hull topsides.... this often requires removal of 3 or 4 planks, as the planks are never in the same alignment as the rubbing strakes.

 

[Roach1948]

I have used microlight for fairing but I do have a splinned hull. It seems to work well and it is easy to sand.

Interestingly I think Dan Houston - Classic Boat Editor had ongoing articles published about the restoration of his yacht Neresis (or something like that). I am not sure if his was epoxy faired but I do know he painted in two-pack paint. Would be interesting to see how well that has worked.

 

[alienzdive]

INTERESTING!

-additional wieght.
-labour/cost intensive

the hull if timber would usually have to be stripped back to the timber if previoulsy coated with single part enamels, This would be time consuming getting into each groove or edge.

 

[Mirelle]

I have heard of this. But (see thread below) "Kestrel" has a perfectly fair hull - splined and painted with Dulux!

 

[Seanick]

Have a look at issue 170 of Wooden Boat Magazine, there is an in-depth article which will give you a full and detailed understanding of the technique, and of the pros and cons.

 

[brownings1]

Thanks very much. Presumably it's a back issue? How can I get to see that ?

 

[keelbolts]

3M makes a "filler" that seems to be, more or less, a thinned bondo. It dries to a light blue color in about 20 minutes. For years I used epoxy & micro-balloons to fair Favona's topsides. About 3 years ago I went to the 3M stuff as it is much easier to apply and sand and is a good deal less toxic. A small bit pops off here and there each year or two, but she looks good and I've been unable to find a downside.