Repair badly damaged bow; PLEASE HELP

You'll never get an exact match, and there is no reason to repaint the whole deck. Here is my recommendation. Either rustoleum or krylon spray paint should work. I'd try rustoleum. Buy one can white and one a yellow as close to your deck color as possible. Find another Sunfish, measure where the racing stripes are, use masking tape to mask the yellow and spray on white stripes. Then use your yellow spray to spray the deck forward of the stripes. While the yellow won't be an exact match, the stripes will cause the two yellows to not butt against each other, making the fact they are different colors much less obvious.

Btw your repair looks great!
 
"Dimples" would cover a lot of territory. :confused:

If they're not deep, you could use automotive "glazing compound". (May be available in white).

If they're deep, take a wire brush to remove loose powdery residues and fill with resin.

As for paint, it depends on the condition of the rest of the bottom. Spray paint (in a can) has very little "filling power". Spraying has to be done in an absolute calm, or the spray will dry in the air, roughening downwind hull surfaces. As for color, "Appliance White" is too white. :(

What technique did you use to fill all that (missing) space?

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First, we installed an access hole. We had intended on doing this before our accident, but we decided that this was an absolutely fitting time to do so. We cut back the damage a bit and then borrowed a grinder from my brother. After we grinded the damaged area back as instructed, we decided to go with the purple foam and gorilla glue method. As far as the deck shape/model, we used a flexible cutting board. Someone on another forum suggested this. Before we cut it though, we waiting for the aluminum trim to arrive so that we could accurately match up the shape of the nose tip. We used a hot knife to cut away and shape the foam into the shape we wanted it to be. My theory was . . . work a little at a time. You can always shave more off if needed, but it will be more of a pain to have to add foam to redo. After shaping with the hot knife, we did some very light sanding to really smooth out any rough looking areas. We glued on the cutting board deck piece. THEN, the rain and thunderstorms moved in . . . probably for a week! Ugh! Finally, after the rain moved on, we started with the fiberglass process. This was certainly a learning experience because we had never worked with fiberglass before. All in all, we are pretty happy with the result. We feel accomplished. I guess the real test will be how it looks after the paint job and finally taking our sunfish out on the water. We are so appreciative of everyone's encouragement and instruction. We couldn't have done this without everyone's help. Right now, we are trying to decide whether we should just sand and paint the whole deck or just try to paint the nose. This is a 73, so a new paint job would certainly spruce up the boat, but we are still trying to decide. We will certainly post more pictures after we are done.
 
Thanks for the update (& the pics). Looks like an excellent repair--glad you decided to bring this boat back to life.
 
Your first pictures had pieces of wrinkled duct tape which could be mistaken for the Sunfish's damaged aluminum trim. (Your damaged aluminum trim would be near-impossible to repair for most of us). I just came across a profile of the bow, which could help in visualizing the new fiberglass nose you're forming:
View attachment 22187Editing time-out: It appears you get about 30 minutes to edit your posts.
Just for grins, I photographed another Sunfish hull "nose"—the hull being used only for parking lot decoration in Dunedin, Florida. :(

Now that I've moved the photo to my computer, I see the nose is different. :confused: Was the nose different in later (rolled-edge-gunwale) models, or did I mistakenly photograph some other Clonefish? :oops:

Fullscreen capture 4292017 70919 PM.bmp.jpg
 
How did this work out?


First, we installed an access hole. We had intended on doing this before our accident, but we decided that this was an absolutely fitting time to do so. We cut back the damage a bit and then borrowed a grinder from my brother. After we grinded the damaged area back as instructed, we decided to go with the purple foam and gorilla glue method. As far as the deck shape/model, we used a flexible cutting board. Someone on another forum suggested this. Before we cut it though, we waiting for the aluminum trim to arrive so that we could accurately match up the shape of the nose tip. We used a hot knife to cut away and shape the foam into the shape we wanted it to be. My theory was . . . work a little at a time. You can always shave more off if needed, but it will be more of a pain to have to add foam to redo. After shaping with the hot knife, we did some very light sanding to really smooth out any rough looking areas. We glued on the cutting board deck piece. THEN, the rain and thunderstorms moved in . . . probably for a week! Ugh! Finally, after the rain moved on, we started with the fiberglass process. This was certainly a learning experience because we had never worked with fiberglass before. All in all, we are pretty happy with the result. We feel accomplished. I guess the real test will be how it looks after the paint job and finally taking our sunfish out on the water. We are so appreciative of everyone's encouragement and instruction. We couldn't have done this without everyone's help. Right now, we are trying to decide whether we should just sand and paint the whole deck or just try to paint the nose. This is a 73, so a new paint job would certainly spruce up the boat, but we are still trying to decide. We will certainly post more pictures after we are done.
 

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