The Thickened Epoxy Repair Example Page
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The Problem:
A 5 inch section of the wooden railing on my dinghy (made from quarter round trim wood) had rotted away and needed
repair.
Materials Needed:
wood scraps; plastic bag (or wax paper); 2 clamps; thickened epoxy (either an epoxy with thickeners
or a pre-thickened epoxy - epoxy used here was our Wet-Dry
700 kevlar ™ reinforced epoxy paste pigmented with a rust colored powder pigment for easy viewing).
Repair 'Trick'/notes:
Thickened epoxies are a pain to work with. They are sticky like taffy and they often droop and sag (like tar) with
gravity. When using a putty knife (or your finger!), it drags the epoxy when you attempt to pull your putty knife
away from the surface. The best you can do is an uneven repair with a lumpy surface and way too much epoxy to compensate
for the epoxy that is dripping or sagging away from the repair site.
Covering the epoxy with thick plastic or wax paper and shaping/forming the epoxy through the plastic is an insider
trick. No more epoxy sticking to your fingers/putty knife. Little or no epoxy sagging (use a lot less epoxy!),
an epoxy surface as smooth as plastic!
The Repair:
I used a piece of wood wrapped in plastic (so the epoxy would not stick to it) under the overhanging lip of the
railing and held it in place with the clamps. This provided the 'bottom surface' of the repair.
Next I filled a large portion of the missing railing void space with a small piece of wood (so as to use less epoxy,
provide a wood 'core' etc. and just to make things easier to work with).
Then I filled the 'hole' in, around, over, and under the wood insert mentioned above with the thickened epoxy.
I just pushed it around filling in all the spaces.
Next I draped plastic over the messy epoxy and smoothed it all out with my hand through the plastic.
I left until the epoxy got hard (cured).
When the epoxy was hard, I peeled off the plastic, clamps and wooden base. What was left is shown in the picture
above. Notice how smooth and even the surface is. It is almost a perfect match to the existing surface.
Using a right angle grinder and then a sander I quickly (within about five minutes) removed excess epoxy and got
down to a nicely faired surface. A bit of non epoxy exterior putty filled two small blemishes (voids) where there
wasn't quite enough epoxy.
Now, its ready for painting!
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