Removing and repairing the old thru hull

This old thru hull once served as the drain for the sink which has long since been removed.

A previous owner decided that the best way to deal with the remaining fitting was to shove a cork into it and paint over it.

As part of fixing up the hull and removing all the old unnecessary fittings the thru hull had to go.

Using a small grinder the old fitting was cut out of the glass. It was not possible to simply unscrew it as it had been glassed in on the inside.

The hole was then flared out to a big shallow cone shape to allow many layers of new glass to be epoxied in to fill it.

The hole from the inside after cutting out the fitting.

I then wedged a wax paper covered backing plate over the hole on the inside to give me a surface to build up against.

Staring with the largest diameter first circles of glass were epoxied into the depression. In total around 20 layers of glass were built up over the hole.

The glass build up was kept slightly lower than the surrounding surface to allow some thickness for filler to be applied to smooth the surface.

Once cured the glass was rough sanded and cleaned then faired with epoxy filler.

After a bit more sanding it is hard to tell there ever was a thru hull here.