owenssailor wrote:
I have a 52 year old 38 foot sailboat. Over the years have had to do various repairs.
The best option is to cut out the rotted area, make a new piece to fit and then epoxy and screw it in place.
The next option is to use West System epoxy with their high density filler and fill in the area where the rotted wood was.
I tried Git Rot years ago. It did help but when I later took that area apart there was hard wood at the holes where the Git Rot was injected but still soft a few millimeters away.
If you have questions plse let me know
What he said!
There are several places that promote expensive thinned epoxy (CPES, or similar) as a miracle snake-oil to make sound wood out of rotten wood. Baloney! There's no way to get it to penetrate far enough to do much good. If you want to give it a try, it is cheaper to thin epoxy 50/50 with xylene, but I say you're wasting your time.
Get the rot out by cutting if possible. Kill remaining rot spores with one of the borates made for the purpose (TimBor, etc) OR by saturating with old-fashioned ethylene glycol anti-freeze, (e.g., Prestone) which penetrates wood exceptionally well and is toxic to rot.
Grave in a replacement piece or sister with good wood beside the bad place.
Wayne
