Re: a little confused about boat deck repairs
Well there are a lot of different ways people do this,
Start off with the difference between plywoods.....
Exterior grade is usually BCX or ACX and those letters mean the outside laminate grade, A being the highest. Exterior grade also uses waterproof glue for the laminate (I think its standard that 90% of ply uses waterproof).
Marine grade is usually ACX (if im not mistaken) but all the interior voids of the plywood are filled up to a 1/16 or 1/8", you know when you cut plywood sometimes you see empty spots in the laminate, thats what the void is.
PT or pressure treated plywood IS wet, its usually green in color and the reason people say dry it out is because resin or epoxy wont adhere to it when wet. The reason its wet is do to the treating process they put the wood in a large tank of awfully deadly chemicals and pressurize is so it penetrates into the wood.
I don't see the point of pressure treated personally because its poisonous, takes 1-2 weeks to dry out if you sit it in the sun (providing its not winter time), and it warps like a sombitch.
Another thing you may want to look into is PT is treated with copper I believe and your boat is aluminum, Its the dissimilar metals property where one metal has a positive charge and one a less positive or negative charge and when they touch over a long period of time one will cause the other to corrode, in this case it would be your boat.
We use two shops for our fiberglass supply in our area and they do a lot of the boat repairs, I asked him what kind of ply they use when we were researching our project and he said ACX exterior grade. He was telling me that if you wrap in fiberglass it will last just as long as marine grade.
The ply we used was baltic birch 7 ply cabinet grade plywood from lowes. 44 bux a sheet.
Now onto the part where you waterproof it. you can choose poly resin or epoxy resin, there are pros and cons to both. I think there is a debate on here somewhere.
Basically the clif notes are, epoxy resin is easier to use, more waterproof, and a lot more expensive.
Poly is a lil harder to use (even tho I never had an issue and Im a noob), water resistant, and about 130 dollars for 5 gallons.
Don't think that poly being water resistant means its going to leak or anything, imagine that most of our boats were built with poly and lasted 30+ years. Most of our decks had NOTHING on the bottom of the wood and lasted 30+ years.
Check out many of the builds with the stars next to the thread and you can see how people did their decks.
Good luck and don't be afraid to ask questions people here love to help.
