Filling gauge holes and smoothing dashes

[InKahntrol]

Hey everybody, its been a while since I've written a decent tech post, so I thought I'd throw up some pics of the dash of my Campbell now that its back from the gelcoater and I can see the final results. Most 20' Campbells have a nice neat row of gauges across the dash, but whoever rigged my boat decided to stick 'em all over the place, which not only looked stupid but was weak as well. We fixed the problem by laminating a piece of marine plywood behind the dash using glass and stainless screws, then plugging the holes and smoothing everything out. I think the fix should make the dash stronger than it was when new. Here's what we did.
First, I used a grinder to take off the topcoats of paint and gel, leaving a nice rough fiberglass surface.
http://www.***boat.com/forums/attach...tid=5270&stc=1
Next, the plywood was cut to fit the back of the dash, including bevelling the edges so the fiberglass can make a nice smooth transition to the back of the dash. Here you can see my dad holding the wood up while I fit it. Once it fit perfectly, a layer of wet fiberglass matt was sandwiched between the plywood and the dash, then a few screws were sunk in to hold it tight. Finally, we glassed over the back to really seal things in.
http://www.***boat.com/forums/attach...tid=5271&stc=1
Once the backing piece was securely in place, I found a holesaw that matched the holes in the dash, and popped out a bunch of plugs from the scaps of leftover marine plywood.
http://www.***boat.com/forums/attach...tid=5272&stc=1
Before laying them in the dash I filled the holes partway with Marglass fiberglass reinforced body filler, which will not only act as glue but should also fill up the airgaps surrounding the plugs.
http://www.***boat.com/forums/attach...tid=5273&stc=1
I then quickly spread a thin layer of marglass over the top to smooth things out, then placed a piece of wet fiberglass cloth over everything to seal it in and bond it together. Keep in mind that I ground the entire surface down pretty far in step one, so even with the new glass on top it still isn't built back up to the level of the rest of the dash... I'll do that later with Marglass.
http://www.***boat.com/forums/attach...tid=5274&stc=1

[InKahntrol]

After letting the glass dry overnight, I touched the edges with a grinder just to clean it up a bit, then spread on the first layer of Marglass. Once it dried I used a 16" longboard to block it down flat, then put down another coat of Marglass and repeated the process until all the low spots were filled in and flat.
http://www.***boat.com/forums/attach...tid=5275&stc=1
When the marglass was as flat as I could make it, there were still lots of tiny little pinholes that needed to be filled, so I brushed on a thick coat of fiberglass resin, let it cure, then blocked that down too.
http://www.***boat.com/forums/attach...tid=5276&stc=1
After all that I finally took it to the gelcoat shop, where they sprayed red gel over the dash... I think it looks pretty good! Now I have to drill new holes and lay things out the way I want them.
http://www.***boat.com/forums/attach...tid=5277&stc=1

[BrendellaJet]

That looks good. Ive been wanting to redo mine before I gel coat but was going to settle on the current arrangement. This gives me a little motivation to do mine now. Just what I needed, more work!

[Jetdriver]

Nice Nice work!

[FunOnTheWater]

Loks smooth, nice job

[SANGER-RICH]

Did you use liquid hardner [ like resin] or bondo hardner in the marglass?? Please PM me? It looks great.

[Fl_Keys]

www.fiberglassrepairvideos.com just email and mention ***boat.net

[smokinflatties]

u make it look easy

[gochappy]

I did mine in pretty much the same manner and it was a lot easier than it seemed it would be...some bonehead had taken a jigsaw to my dash to shorten it for legroom and I also added that back on....doing the radius where the dash meets the side, now that took a little engineering to create the curve...

[thmper321]

Did you use liquid hardner [ like resin] or bondo hardner in the marglass?? Please PM me? It looks great.
Typically one would use bondo hardner but it does require a little more hardner than you would use in bondo. Try and use a colored hardner instead of white so its easier to see how much is being added.
Nice job on the hole fills!!