1974 20' SeaCraft SF CC rebuild

[flyingfrizzle]

Originally Posted by Mikem8560

my decks are ok now but if I had to repair later on is there a real advantage to the squares rather then a dull piece of plywood ?

From what I understand doing the small squares will help keep the deck from warping up and also it is a much stronger way to core the deck. You can curve or crown the deck to help the water to drain if you wanted and could do curves this way too. Also if you space the squares out a small bit once you bed them down and then pour thickened resin between them it creates a fiberglass grid that is supper strong. If you get a screw hole in one section it will only get water in that square compartment that the core is in. This contains it there, keeps it from spreading to other squares and stops it from rotting the whole deck. Plus most of the strength comes from the fiberglass layup and not the core itself and doing it this way the decking relies more on the lay up and the wood is just a filler to fill the void.

Here is a section of deck I did:

I waxed the surface them primed it with a high build primer then layed a layer of csm first then a layer of 1708 then another layer of csm again on top of a mold table....
The first layer of csm is going to be the top of the deck and the csm will prevent print threw of the 1708 from showing in the primer. The other layer of csm is to help bed the wood squares into.


I bedded the wood blocks down in thickened resin...


I added resin that was a little thick in between the squares...


I added several layer of csm over the coring...


Then added a layer of 1708 then on top of that one more csm layer to build thickness and to sand on so I dont sand into the 1708 fibers...


This created a 1" thick lambent that was smooth on the top side for patching a section of decking...