best way to fill in screw holes from the seat

[MM33]

Hi all,

Just was curious on what to use to fill in my old screw holes in my deck. I am switching from pedistal seats to a leaning post and want to fill in the old holes. The holes are in the non-skip area, please let me know how you would filll these baby's.

Thanks,
[img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]

[EBEACH]

Clean out the hole with acetone, let it dry out, then mix up some gel coat and drip it in with a toothpick or something. (?)

[gw204]

I'm currently going through the exact same thing. What I did was to drill out the holes to make sure any and all remaining caulking got removed. Then I gave them a quick acetone bath. Next step was to cut some small wooden dowels that would get coated w/ epoxy and put in the holes.

If you are lucky the old screw holes won't be completely through the deck so you can (after drilling out the holes) just fill them with epoxy. I had to use the dowel rods because some of my holes went all the way though and plain epoxy would have drained out the bottom.

Once the epoxy cured and the dowels were set, I ground off the tops to a level below the gelcoat and again coated the bare wood w/ epoxy to seal it. Once that cures, I'll again grind it down, but not to bare wood, and gelcoat.

I have a Grady so there is a diamond non-skid pattern on the floor I have to match. I was going to try the Gibco Flex Mold from Minicraft but now I'm thinking I might just apply the gelcoat w/ a plastic scraper to get it flush w/ the tops of the diamonds, and then use a small file to cut the grooves once it cures. We'll see though.

Good luck.

[MM33]

Thx, Mine are drilled through as well, I guess I will try to do the dowel thing too if there is no other way to really fill it. What type of epoxy do you use to fill the holes?

Thx

[ocuyler]

Definately drill out the holes plenty oversize. You will find out if there is any rotted wood in there so you can even bigger if that's the case. Brian's idea works perfectly.

[gw204]

I used West System in this case just cause I already had it. When I do my transom I'll probably use something else cause West is too damn expensive for big jobs.... [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]