Repairing stress cracks in a riveted aluminum boat

thill · Jul 31, 2024

I think you will be glad you did, but report back as to how it worked for you.

JonM · Aug 27, 2024

I started repairing my boat last week and completed 2 of the 6 patches I need to make. It's not going so well, I have a few pictures I'd like to upload but the site isn't allowing me to upload them. It says "pic is too big" even after I compress the pics to under 1mb.

lightflyer1 · Aug 27, 2024

Always easier to host them on some other server and post the links to them back here.

LDUBS · Aug 27, 2024

JonM said:
I started repairing my boat last week and completed 2 of the 6 patches I need to make. It's not going so well, I have a few pictures I'd like to upload but the site isn't allowing me to upload them. It says "pic is too big" even after I compress the pics to under 1mb.

Not my area of expertise, but I've found adjsuting the image size to 320x320 pixels (scaled proportionately) works. That is typically well under 1mb. Maybe even under 100kb, though I think you are safe with anything around 500kb.

JonM · Aug 27, 2024

This is repair 1 which was accessible from the inside. I did this repair with my boat tech and unfortunately we blew up the holes so I had to make washers from the scrap aluminum. I used the sheet-holders to pull everything together and riveted it. This patch seemed very sturdy, the rivets that sort of run down the center are the ones for the ribs and we added some extras outside to pull the patch edges tight to the hull. Looking back I think we should have put more rivets, I don't know if I can add some now that the 5200 has dried up and would appreciate some advice on that.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1xhO2mZp8GRnluss3PO0ha3egjZksSsYq?usp=drive_link

JonM · Aug 27, 2024

This is repair 2, I didn't have access to the inside. I had some help with lining up the holes in the patch but did pretty much everything else on my own. I put way too much 5200 on this one, I learned for the next ones. Some holes were slightly blown up in the boat but I was still able to pull everything tightly together with the sheet-holders and rivet it. My biggest challenge is making a template of the holes in the boat and drilling them out accurately in the patch. I've had to scrap some aluminum because I couldn't get the holes to line up. Any advice on making a good/accurate template? Also can I add rivets to patches that have already dried up? I know this one looks terrible with the 5200 everywhere but I will clean it up. I'm slowly getting the hang of this...

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1WOXJEmoUNX_JLvcZ-8RxC2bx6Wh2FVFR?usp=drive_link