[wunhunglo]

Those cracks need dealing with first before you even think about epoxy. If you don't do anything they will just spread. Drill the ends first before you weld or patch before epoxying.

[thrillbilly]

Well I finally got round to workin on my boat, fiberglassed it, will post pics soon.

[Rex in OTZ]

If you were rowing round in a park duck pond you could get away with bodgeing it, if I had to rely on this boat to get me to my Alaska Bush destination I'd repair it like my life depended on it as it vwould most likely would, nothing like hitting streches of open river with wind whipped waves slapping your hull hard, Seen welded Woolridge boats with all the structure and gussets all busted out them and 3 boats that had and 1-2 foot long cracks running along the chine's of lighter built boats.
I'd stop drill those cracks and apply a rivet'd lap patch on the outside and seal the patch/crack and patch edges useing 3-M 5200 boat hull sealant, I like this stuff because it adhears to dry clean metal and sets up to a hard rubber consistancy that flexes but not crack like hard epoxy's do and its compatable with wood and metal.

Once used that sealant to seal a leaky aircraft float, every day the float was full of water seaping in through a poorly sealed riveted seam I'd used some this sealant and mixed some acetone with it to make it a little more runny and pourd it inside and it flowed down through the leaking seam and started dripping out on the outside the hull I pressed cardboard against the drip to stem the flow and allowed the sealant to set up, the cardboard was stuck to the hull but it cleaned off nicely useing a sharp wood chisel and reapplying some all along the outside afterwards as reinforcement.

proper aluminimum riveting can be found in paper back avaiation maintenance hand books (most all avaiation supply stores carry this handy booklet)this covers the very basic's of rivet selection, head type, shank diameter and edge distance and how to properly shoot a rivet useing a pneumatic rivet gun and bucking bars

Boats get a real beating here and have repaired a few, best to repair the best you can nothing worse than sealing a half baked repair, those cracks have to be shored up to prevent further flexing and progression of the cracks, sealing the crack without shoreing up the metal is going to just flex and spread.