Malahini Design

Malahini Design

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Crack in the plywood

Like the still before the storm, you always worry when things are going well because you're waiting for the big screw-up or things to go wrong.  Well, that happened when I was applying the stain.  I noticed a crack in the side plywood near the transom.   This is 1/4" plywood that has to curve pretty severely to follow the transom.   When applying this plywood it took a lot of clamping and some strap clamps to bring it into position.   Here is a picture of the clamping required to bring the sides into form at the transom. 

Apparently, there was a weakness in the plywood on the other side to the one pictured.  There is about a 6" crack located about a foot forward of the transom and 6" down from the chine.   Here is a picture of the crack:
The crack is noticeable as a ridge on the outside and a crease on the inside.  The smoothness of the curved plywood is broken by this crack.  I was more concerned about the loss of strength than by the cosmetics.  I needed to patch and reinforce this to restore strength.  The question is: how to do it? 
I decided to attack it from both sides.  On the inside I will epoxy two sheets of 5.2mm plywood I had laying around. This plywood bends easier in one direction so I will align it so it follows the curve and press it into position using this clamping block I constructed.
This matches the curve on the inside of the hull.  I also have some clamps that can be used as spreaders that I used against the building form to force the plywood into position while being epoxied.
This is a shot from inside the hull showing the clamps pressing the block and plywood into position.

On the outside, I wanted to get epoxy into the crack and into the inner layer which I believe is also cracked.  To do this, I drilled a few small holes into the crack and used a syringe to inject epoxy into the crack.   I then used another clamping form that matched the outside contour and a clampling jig to apply pressure from the outside.

This clamping jig is anchored to the floor and a heavy duty strap clamp anchored to the sheer is pulling in on the 2x4s and applying pressure to the clamping form.   I'm hoping I can apply enough pressure to eliminate the ridge while the epoxy cures.  We'll see tomorrow.

No comments:

Post a Comment