Deck replacement on 1995 AS Explorer 245 - advice needed

[msteinkampf]

Before putting the deck back together, I wanted to remove some epoxy that I had carelessly splashed on the gel coat when I was rebuilding the deck for the fuel tank. It’s a spot about 3 by 6 inches with epoxy embedded in the nonskid.


I did some searching on the Internet about how to remove cured epoxy from gel coat, but I didn’t find anything better than what is in the West System fiberglass manual: “Use a heat gun to soften the epoxy (200°F). Heat a small area and use a paint or cabinet scraper to remove the bulk of the coating. Sand the surface to remove the remaining material.” I tried carefully heating up the area with my heat gun, but the epoxy wasn’t softening, and I was concerned that I might damage the underlying gel coat by overheating, so I tried another approach – hot water. I first tried soaking a towel lying on the epoxy with water at exactly 200 degrees, but the epoxy didn’t budge. However, pouring boiling water directly onto the epoxy did loosen it up enough to be picked out with an awl whose taper matched the grooves in the nonskid.


This method was tedious but effective. At one point I had three pots of water on the stove, as it was clear that water any cooler than boiling was ineffective. Scrubbing with a bronze bristle brush under boiling water removed almost all the remaining epoxy while leaving the nonskid completely intact.


I’ll finish cleaning the nonskid with some Soft Scrub and maybe some acetone or gentle pressure washing, but it’s clean enough for reassembly now.

M

[msteinkampf]

It’s been easy to procrastinate on this project, with mission trips to Honduras and Kenya, family visits, etc., but there have been some comments from the family about getting this project done. I sanded and cleaned the bottom skins, coated them with epoxy, wet down the Coosa boards with unthinned epoxy and then coated them with epoxy thickened with colloidal silica (West System 406), and glued the panels together.

Initial coat of epoxy on lower skin.


Coosa board with thickened epoxy applied to lower skin.


The Coosa board was applied on May 29, and it was a cool spring, so I used the fast hardener (West System 205). I didn’t get around to applying the top skin until July 18. The top skin was a little more than 0.05 inches lower than the surrounding deck, so I used a layer of 1708 to even up the edges, and I even managed to tuck the 1708 under the kerf after I wet it down with epoxy. By this time it was hot enough to switch to the slow hardener (West System 206).

Some mismatch was expected.


Laying out the 1708


Coosa with 1708 wetted and ready for the top skin

I applied unthickened epoxy to the upper skin, let it get tacky, and then troweled on thickened epoxy with a TotalBoat flexible spreader, using the ¼ inch V-notch.


I also used some thickened epoxy to reattach the bottom skin to the stringers. Three days later, the deck was rock solid, and the edges were almost perfectly aligned.



M

[RickK]

Looks like it's coming out real nice. Congrats.