How to Harden a Laser Deck

R

rubbish84

New Member
I've just recently bought a 1982 laser 2 (I'm loving it btw). I've noticed that the deck is a little softer than I thought it was when I bought it.

I would like to make it harder if possible, does anyone know if there is a way to do it?
If so, how? What products would I need to buy?
 
Ahhh..... hardening a deck.... one of the most miserable repairs I have ever done.

If the deck is seperated from the hull, it's not sooooo bad. What you can do is saturate the underdeck foam with resin, put pressure on it and it will sorta re-attach to the deck. If the boat is still together, then it becomes a little more time consuming.... I did this on my laser last fall.....

The first thing to look at is where is the deck soft? Is it a hard impact area, such as the rails or mast step area? If so, then you definately want to address the issue. If its an area of less impact, such as the back deck, it might be more trouble than it's worth if you are just going to sail the boat for fun.

Now, this is by no means the only way to do this... but here's what I did. I literally pulled out all of the deck on top of the delaminated part. The, I let my boat dry for 4 days. If the foam is at all damp, this process won't work. I then put down an inital coat of resin to create a hard bonding surface. Then, I fiberglassed over it using an extensive matt-cloth-matt sandwich. I then sanded and gelcoated. To get a nice textured surface, I sprinkled the gelcoat with table salt. Once it dried, I washed it down and the salt dissolved. It ended up being really solid and looked pretty good as well.

I would encourage you NOT to use epoxy. For this kind of job you want a chemical bond, not just adhesive power. Your typical epoxies dont chemically bond with fiberglass. This will lead to delamination down the road and this is not a process you want to have to do more than once.

Hope this was helpful.....


Jon
 
Hi Jon,

Thanks for your reply. It sounds like a little too much work for me to engage in considering I'm just sailing for fun. I thought there might just be a quick fix. I think I will wait until I have a problem and then I will probably just have it professionally repaired.
 
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