The engine cover/rear deck of my boat has very poor torsinal rigidity. With a single off center ram, the deck will twist a good 9". Apparently, the manufacturer only used twin rams with this deck, so the rigidity wasn't of a prime concern (They have since changed their deck design to one that's stiffer and now use a single ram). At first I was going to have the local shop fabricate some reinforcements out of aluminum tube stock, but I'm now thinking that I'd be better off reinforcing the deck with fiberglass. In a couple of places the builder reinforced the deck using a 4"x1/4" fiberglass tube cut in half. This would work nicely for the application. The question is how much cloth do I use? Where do I need to put extra layers of cloth on? How much should the cloth overlap the plywood? What type of resin? ...?

ttt

Cord, I was told by a customer that does boat repair "the rule is
1 layer is cosmetic, 2nd I forget, 3rd and mor is structural. Each layer should over lap at least 1" past the previous layer. It sounded right to me anyway. Geo

Thanks!