Using CPES to restore old boat...

[NGrace]

Hi folks,

My name is Nate and I'm new to the forum. I just bought a 19' Bank dory that was built about 20 years ago, and it has been sitting in the water for 2+ years. The boat is in need of some TLC, for certain. I inspected the boat pretty well and there doesn't seem to be any major rot, but mostly just some soft places where the wood has degraded from being in the water and elements. Would CPES be a good product to use to restore the old soft wood and give it back some structure? I spent some time on the Rot Doctor web site, and the CPES seems to be just the ticket. I was curious if anyone here has had experience using this product and what the results were/are.

Thanks in advance.

Nathan

[Peter Malcolm Jardine]

Nathan, use the search feature to find discussion on CPES. There have been many... and the quick answer is yes, or maybe.

[StevenBauer]

This thread gives both sides of the CPES argument. I found it by typing "thechemist" in the search thingy:


http://www.woodenboat-ubb.com/vbulle...ght=thechemist

[Thorne]

Solid wood or ply? Is the softness mostly in the bottom planks, or elsewhere?

I had similar issues with the solid fir bottom planks on the dory skiff I've been restoring since September -

http://www.luckhardt.com/dory1.html

CPES is great stuff in my book, but it won't really 'harden up' partially rotted wood, it works better for helping to prevent further rot and primarily for giving epoxy, paint or varnish a good bond.

After sanding, scraping, and wire-brushing the bottom planks, I made sure the soft areas were saturated with multiple coats of CPES, then used some of Smith's epoxy fairing compound to fill the slight divots where the wire brush had removed the really soft wood. I then used a number of coats of marine-grade oil-based paint to give the wood a hard protective surface.

You can't fill large areas with epoxy fairing compound without having it damage the surrounding wood when the wood expands and the epoxy doesn't -- but it seems to work OK for small divots on bottom planks.

[Wild Wassa]

I've restored a boat thanks to CPES.







CPES is the real deal ... enhanced by Smth and Co's Fill-It.

If old timber is to be kept bright, because CPES sends erroded timber black, there is a need to select the bleech that best suits the timber before CPES'ing. As Tony Hunt knows, this boat was restored to test CPES when it was first distributed in Oz. I though that Fill-It was amazing. I made the laminates to fix the holes and Fill-it was amajor component in the epoxy/glass ply laminates.





We had no shortage of bits to test CPES on.




CPES on Douglas Fir.

Warren.

[Wild Wassa]

Epoxy over well keyed CPES. The foil on the left is a test of polyurethane over well keyed epoxy. The foils looked so salty, I chose clear poly over a whiite, that they were originally going to be painted with. In this photo I've faired the rudder but I had just started to fair the CB.

Warren.