Wildernest Help!

[jgk91]

If anyone can advise me or help me out with this problem I’d sure be appreciate it. I recently purchased a Wildernest Camper and ran into the following problem during my restoration. I did not notice the damage when I bought it, but upon examining it more closely I realized I have a bit of a problem. The bottom rail in the right corner has corroded away terribly. The attached photo was taken from below looking upward. I chiseled out the damaged area as much as I thought I should. The wood embedded in the fiberglass was wet and rotten on the inside. I stopped chiseling because I think I finally hit a solid spot. Can anyone give me some advice on how to repair this missing chunk of fiberglass and wood? I was thinking of applying some Bondo filler and sanding it as close as I can to it’s original shape. Does this sound like a reasonable idea? I don’t have much experience with these types of repairs so any advice on this would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

 

[GCecchetto]

This is essentially a boat repair, if you would rather have someone fix it for you, talk to someone in your area that repairs fiberglass boat hulls. If you are okay with doing it yourself, you should carefully clean out the old wood, scrape it out to get the area clean down to the fiberglass. This should leave you with a void that is somewhat regular in shape. You can then shape a new piece of wood, or starboard would be preferred, to fit into the void. You'll want to embed the filler piece in fiberglass resin, or better yet epoxy resin, and then layup fiberglass mesh over it. I would recommend you shape a piece of wood that you can wrap with wax paper or something that will not bond to the resin, that represents the shape of the bed rail to clap down on your repair so you are left with a nice plat surface where the shell will sit on your bed rail. Hopefully this all makes sense. I'm sure someone that knows more about fiberglass repairs will chime in. The key here is that this needs to be done as a structural repair, you can't just fill it up with a bunch of filler material.

 

[jgk91]

GCecchetto thank you. I think I'm going take a shot a repairing it myself first, so I'll search for some boat repair videos on Youtube. I get what your saying about looking at this as a structural repair as opposed to just trying to patch it up. The info you provided was very helpful in giving me a place to start. Thanks again I really appreciate it.

 

[jgk91]

GCecchetto can I ask you a few more questions please? So I was able to chisel back all the way to solid wood and then cut and fit a nice new piece of replacement wood 12" long and about a 1/2" thick (the pics are both top and bottom views of the damaged area). I left about a 1/4" or so to apply the repair material. I am going to return the Bondo I got to Home Depot and buy some fiberglass resin and fiberglass cloth as you suggested. Should I apply the resin and cloth on both sides of the replacement piece of wood or first glue the wood to the actual fiberglass shell and then apply the resin and fiberglass cloth over the top and bottom of the damaged areas? Also, you mentioned covering a piece of wood with wax paper. I assume you meant to do that on a second piece of wood to use as a base to clamp underneath the whole repair job while it dries correct? Thanks.

 

[GCecchetto]

I'm not the the best knowledge source for fiberglass repairs, but I have done some. Hopefully I don't steer you in the wrong direction. Think of the wood as a lost form, the strength comes from the fiberglass shape created around it. You'll want to embed the wood in resin for sure, and it honestly won't hurt if you wrap it in glass mat, but ultimately you want your final couple of layers of glass mat to lap over on to structurally sound fiberglass all the way around you repair. So, you'll be wrapping from the bottom up around onto the top so you are encapsulating the wood filler. You'll probably need several layers of mat inside the footprint of the repair to get you up to the surface of the surrounding fiberglass, and then your last couple of layers span over the patch on to solid fiberglass. If you run every layer of mat onto the surfaced around your patch, you'll have a big lump around the perimeter. Ideally you probably want the area of the repair left a little low so you can use filler to smooth everything out.

Yes the piece wrapped in wax paper is to use to clamp the repair. You want your patch to be dense and as void free as possible.

 

[jgk91]

Hey GCecchetto I can't thank you enough for taking the time to help me with this and all the good information you provided. I also watched a few Youtube videos on fiberglass repairs involving resin and glass mat and they too were immensely helpful. I'm pretty confident that I can make a reasonably good repair based on all this info. Thanks again.

Jim