dragged centerboards

I guess i was dragging bottom a good part of the day and wore out a three inch section on the bottom of each center board. its down thru the glass



http://s10.photobucket.com/albums/a116/ ... 8_1012.jpg

How does one go about this repair?

You can rebuild the area with glass/resin, followed up with new gel coat. If you would send your private email address to [email protected] I can send you some photos of a rudder I recently worked on for almost the same issue. The rudder had a very wide trailing edge causing lots of humming & vibration at high speed. The repair process will be very similar.

My first 17 had a similar issue. One of the previous owners obviously dragged the boat up the beach a lot, and the center boards were worn nearly flat on the leading edges. To repair the boards, I first cleaned and then scuffed up the leading edges with sand paper. I then put the board in a vice, so that it was supported leading edge upward. I made a trough out of masking tape around the entire leading edge. Then I mixed up a batch of resin and pured it into the trough and let it cure. The leading edge was basically a block of resin that I was then able to shape smooth first using a flat file, and then progressively finer grits of sand paper. It turned out quite nice other than not matching color-wise.

sm

SM...your idea is good, up until you used resin without any filler, or better yet fiberglass strands for reinforcing. I've told many people over the years to never make a fix without some type of material in the resin. The reason for this is w/out material to add strength to the resin it will most likely crack & chip off when it gets hit with the tiller or when the rudders are moved around, like in your cat box. Send me your email address to [email protected] and I can send you back some photos of what I'm talking about.