Removing deck / cap from hull - fiberglass question

[wguttrid]

Hey guys spent the better part of a day and half removing rusted screws from the rub rail (which I manage to do with 3" cut of wheel and saved the rub rail extrusion) and then removed the rusted screws from the deck to hull joint (which is shoebox).

Lets just say after cursing these rusted screws and trying ever method knowing to me I was bit over zealous on the grinding and have some fiberglass patchwork to do on the deck. Basically for some of the scews that held the deck to hull (and was covered by the rub rail) I had to grind pretty much right thu the lip so in a couple places instead of the solid straight edge I have a an edge that has been notched out about 3/4".

So curious what will be best way to patch this up? Will take pictures tommorow to better show what I mean as the deck is all ready to be winched free from the hull.

 

[wguttrid]

Re: Removing deck / cap from hull - fiberglass question

Hi guys...must have accidently posted this twice...maybe someone can help delete this double post.

 

[Spudfyre]

Re: Removing deck / cap from hull - fiberglass question

I found the fastest and easiest way (for me) to remove rivets connecting the top deck to the hull was with a wonderbar and rubber malet.

About 50% of the rivets I just had to place the wonderbar between the lip and hull and give the rivet 2 good sharp whacks and the rivet split clean through...rusted rivets only needed 1 whack.

For hard to reach rivets where it was hard to pry the lip off the hull, I used 10 degree wedges I cut from 2x4 scraps.

The second way, was to put the corner edge of the wonderbar under the rivet top and just lightly tap it in a full circle around the rivet to lift the metal top. Then ...whack...and the entire top of the rivet comes off.

Sure beat grinding, cutting and drilling. Took me about 10 minutes to do about 50-75 rivets.

I also found a Dremel Multi-Max cut the rivets nicely, but it was much slower and noisier than the wonderbar approach.