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Hi Dean. I saw a weld on a K boat that had bondo on it. Not so good. The
paint was lifting and there was a visible crack where the bondo attached to the
metal. Water was obviously getting in there and to fix it, I guess you'd have to
grind out the bondo and....well, you get the idea.
I would suggest a method that although is a little more work, never needs
repair. There is a type of filler rod called silicon-bronze and it's very strong
and cheap. Here's the beauty of this method. It takes very little heat to melt
this in if you use a 1/8 inch carbon arc gouging rod. It's similar to tig
welding. You can use either AC or DC power. Sharpen the carbon rod to a point,
put it in the stick weld stinger, use it to melt JUST the filler rod. Don't need
to apply the arc to the base metal. It flows out like any bronze rod, and
the base metal hardly gets hot at all. After you cover your regular steel weld
bead with this stuff, use a sanding disk to smooth it out, and then paint it.
It's relatively cheap, real easy, permanent, can be completely removed if you
want to later with just a sander, and you will get the basics of TIG welding
down in the bargain. It's a good material to use alone if you're putting
something very thin together, like galvanized sheet metal. I've used it for lots
of stuff over the years, even "welding" cracks in rusty auto body panels that
would have evaporated if I tried to mig weld or torch braze. It sticks to
just about anything ( except aluminum) and is fairly rust resistant. Even if you
don't do your weld covers with it, try it out. It's very useful around the
shop.
On the fiberglassing directly onto your tank....It's sticky, and will
probably be OK, but what do you do when you need to re-paint or if you bump into
something will it still hold air?
As you know, I have bolt on ballast tanks, and really, everything on
my pressure hull can be removed with a couple of bolts. I'll be in salt
water most of the time, and I want to be able to grind/sand every where if it
comes to that. On the K boat design, could you weld a small flange on the
pressure hull like maybe 1 inch by 1/4 inch bar stock and then bolt the ballast
tank to that with a nice gooey gasket between ? Then you could pull it off later
for paint repair and just paint over the little flange. If you used a gooey
gasket maybe 1/4 inch thick, you could withstand a little movement say from a
small bump/collision and it could flex a little but still hold air. Frank
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