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Whaler Central,
Using all of the good information in the forums I have successfully removed my old rub rail on my 1986 17' Montauk. I have already obtained the new rubrail from Whaler but I am perplexed as to what is the best way to remove these very large rivets. As you can see in the attached picture I drilled the heads off of these to get the old rubrail off. These rivits are much larger then I expected them to be, the shaft of the rivets is 3/8 of an inch.. They don't seem to want to push back into the hull. so my options that I have figured out is to cut the exposed part with a dremel tool or use the drill more to just cut them down. My plan was to then fill the holes with 3M 5200.
Thoughts??
Thank you in advance for your help!
MDBayMontauk
MDBayMontauk attached the following image:
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Edited by MDBayMontauk on 04/05/09 - 2:07 PM
Looks like rivet overkill. I would cut them flush, then use an angle grinder with a flap disc, and slightly recess the area, and surface it out with marine bondo. 5200 will not work, and will drip out of the holes.
Thanks for the info! I know nothing about fiberglass or Bondo, are you referring to the Bondo Marine Epoxy Stick? Do I just shove it in the rivet hole and it will harden as it dries?
I just removed the rubrail on my 1992 Montauk. I have removed a lot of aircraft rivets and learnd a trick a long time ago that worked well here (pop-rivets are a lot easier than bucked rivets and cherrymax stuff found in airplanes). I drilled through the center of the rivets with a sharp high quality letter drill slighly smaller than the o.d. of the rivet shaft and then put a pin punch about 2/3 the diameter of the hole and and rotated it around until the rivets broke off flush with the fiberglass and drove the remaining part in with a punch (with the same o.d. as the rivet) and a 20 ounce ball peen hammer. About 10 of the rivets spun as I was drilling them and I used an abrasive cut off wheel in a 4-1/2" grinder to bring them flush with the fiberglass.
When I mention rotating the punch in the rivet, what you are doing is putting the punch in the hole about 1/2" and applying pressure perpendicular to the centerline of the hole so that the inner part of the punch is pressing on the opposite side of the rivet that the outer part of the rivet is being contacted. By applying circular pressure on the punch, the outboard side of the rivet thins out where it contacts the fiberglass and after several circular revolutions, the rivet snaps off right at the score line created by the applied force.
This may sound more complicated than it is but the entire removal took less than 45 minutes.
