Removing Rotted Wood Fiberglass Boat Floor

The methods used to make minor repairs to wood and fiberglass floors in a boat are similar in many ways.

Removing rotted wood fiberglass boat floor.

Start removing the old damaged material using an electric saw to cut it. But if you buy a fixer upper or have an older boat you love and don t want to part with there s a fair chance you ll need to replace part or all of the rotten boat. If the stringers and bulkheads are rotten get them replaced with fiberglass ones. At this point the fiberglass transom had bits of leftover wood 4 so i used a grinder to grind it all down to bare fiberglass then used a belt sander to create the flattest possible surface.

Once you are confident that the rotten sections have been removed you can start to repair the floor as needed. I started using a chisel hammer and crowbar to remove small pieces at a time. Make sure to. If you have the means and resources to remove a piece of the boat floor and replace it then that is the best thing you can do for the boat.

Hopefully when you bought your boat you gave it a thorough pre purchase inspection and didn t get any nasty surprises. In the smaller fiberglass boats the wood for the engine mounts is usually part of the stringer assembly and encased in fiberglass. Some parts will be super easy if they re really rotten. You cannot repair the boat floor while rotten wood remains as it will only continue to rot.

A lot of work. Replacing a rotten boat deck is a fairly common task and it s a lot easier than you might think. The most common material used for boat flooring is bc plywood and it is also used for fiberglass boats in particular. Other repairs require removing fixtures or carpets that prevent access to the damaged floor in a boat.