on my 17 circa 1977 there was a wooden block glasses into the hull. I added a layer of glasses and refilled the 2 holes and used ss nylon locknuts on the 2 legs of the boweye. Sent from my T-Mobile 4G LTE Device -------- Original message --------From: John Schinnerer <john@eco-living.net> Date: 7/11/17 6:03 AM (GMT-08:00) To: montgomery_boats@mailman.xmission.com Subject: Re: M_Boats: Rebuilding bow ring reinforcement My question would be, why was there a chunk of wood used there in the first place? Rather than just bolting it to the fiberglass, maybe with some kind of resin-based stiffener. If there was a good reason why the wood was used - flexibility? Shock absorption? spreading the stress load? etc., I'd consider that when repairing. If no functional reason - maybe it was just quicker and cheaper as a spacer - then your idea might be fine. I think you mean fumed silica or amorphous silica though (the powdery forms)...'colloidal' means a suspension in a liquid, which probably wouldn't mix well with the epoxy... :-) cheers, John S. On 07/11/2017 03:48 PM, Dan Farrell wrote:

I recently discovered that the wood used to reinforce the bow ring if my '79 m-17 had been ruined by water intrusion.  The fiberglass over it's top had collapsed.

I've removed the damaged fiberglass and the wood pulp, and was planning to glass over the area little by little from the bottom up, filling in the space formerly filled by wood with epoxy thickened with colloidal silica.

Does this seem like a poor plan to anyone?

Dan Farrell M17 #301

-- John Schinnerer - M.A., Whole Systems Design -------------------------------------------- - Eco-Living - Whole Systems Design Services People - Place - Learning - Integration john@eco-living.net - 510.982.1334 http://eco-living.net http://sociocracyconsulting.com