Damaged Boat

Has anyone ever had hull repair done on a aluminum boat ?

I am looking at buying a lund with some gouges, dents and scrapes from a friend for a good price but am afraid of the potential repair costs.

I have been to several boat repair sites on the web and have seen boats with alot more damage than this one that was repaired and look brand new.

Just dont want to spend more than it would cost to buy one that doesnt need repairs !

Anybody recomend a good repair shop ??

Thanks ahead for the help

I’m in the same boat (no pun intended) and curious, what sites did you look at that do repair???

My father in law had mouse urine eat holes through his Alumacraft a couple years ago, ended up having a local metalworker reskin the boat, wasn’t real expensive, guy did it over the winter, took his time. looks good too.

for smaller leaks or small holes, I think there is a product called JB Weld. it is a 2 part epoxy, that should work pretty good, and cheap. it can be sanded and painted.
Jack..

I used JB Weld to fill a missing rivet and it has held up well now for over 2 years. You have to rough-up the area with sandpaper first so that it adheres better. After a couple days you can sand off the excess and it is ready to go. I wouldn’t recommend this for large areas but for small rivet sized holes it works well.

Eyehunter

B,

There was a post about a guy out in Delano that specializes in this. I’ll see if I can find it, cuz I figured it wouldn’t hurt to have the dock marks etc.. removed from my boat this fall.

I too have used JB Weld with mixed results. Some of the rivets i touched up held fine, others cracked and started leaking again. I bought these sticks of aluminum/alloy? you heat up with a torch and it’s basically like welding. Well the problem i ran into, was you couldn’t get the area hot enough to melt the sticks, the boat just dispersed the heat quickly. When i tested the sticks on some random aluminum scraps, it was as strong as a real weld.

BE VERY CAREFULL when applying heat to aluminum……Once you get too hot, you won’t have a pretty picture! The aluminum will just soften and sag or worse, you may burn a hole.

Aluminum doesn’t act the same way that regular metals do when heat is applied.