A little tape’ll do ya!
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A Little Tape’ll Do ya!
Got a few old drinkholder holes in your steering console that need patching? Or a spot where an antiquated plotter used to be that needs filling in? To put the finishing touches on the job, there are several epoxy fillers out there on the market and most of them work pretty well. And you can also mix up your very own as well, of course, using epoxy resin, hardener, and one of any number of high or low-density materials (like microfibers, microballoons, or colloidal silica, for example) that fit the application.
But how do you actually complete the repair? How do you make the filler blend seamlessly with the surfaces around it, so it disappears under the paint or gelcoat you intend to lay down later on?
Here’s a trick a boat yard guy told us about recently. It will likely save you a little time and heartache and will undoubtedly produce a great-looking job. Moreover, it requires just about zero effort.
Let’s say you’ve filled in a circular hole that is approximately 3 inches in diameter somewhere in a slab of cored fiberglass on board your boat. And let’s say you’ve used a plywood disc and some thickened epoxy (or some fiberglass fabric and resin) to essentially plug the hole and now you’re getting ready to carefully smooth and finish the surface of your repair with a relatively thin layer of epoxy filler.
Stop! For just a sec.
Before you apply the filler using a resin spreader, plastic putty knife, or whatever tool you prefer, form a square, rectangle, or some other angular shape around the hole using wide swathes of varnishing tape. Make sure the tape is at least two or three inches from the circumference or exterior edges of the hole. If you can’t achieve this, approximate as closely as possible.
The idea here is pretty simple. As you spread the filler within the confines of the tape, you create a layer of filler over the hole and the surrounding area that is equivalent to the thickness of the tape. Once the filler has cured and is ready for sanding (and the tape has been removed), the layer is going to be thin enough so it’s easily removed using a sanding block but thick enough so that it allows you to very accurately blend the repair into the surfaces that surround it. This virtually guarantees that you won’t scour out a depression over the hole during the sanding process, a development that will require another time-consuming pass with the filler.
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