Thinking of getting rid of my bow rail. Bad idea?

It will be fine. I ve used coosa for a bunch of things it’s a great material.

For instance I ve used 3/4” coosa to built boarding stairs. Just coosa, no even glassed. Also I ve redone the whole side deck and aft deck enclosure with coosa, also unglassed. You can see some of it behind the stairs. Strong stuff
 

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I used coosa for a bottom up job on our bow. It went from the very bow to the back of the anchor locker and was under the pulpit and windlass. I used two layers or 3/8 with thickened epoxy and under the windlass I added a layer again. I glassed over all of it. I wonder a bit about merely painting it and would hesitate to go there without backing of some sort. Get a piece and play with it before you make up your mind.
 
Man this job sucks. If I knew what a PITA it was going to be to get to the underneath of these stanchions, I definitely would have thrown my rail in the dumpster. I know, it would be dangerous up front, but at this point I would prefer drowning in a cold ocean to contorting my body inside another locker whilst trying to spin a nut onto a thread I can’t see, with my left bloody hand. Four down, twelve to go.
 
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The price for knowing it was done right is high, but ( imho ) worth it.

I admit that some tasks have proven to be a bit pricier than anticipated!

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PascalG said:
Toggle bolts.
Click to expand...

that was my original plan for the ‘blind ones’, but for the ones I can at least see, thought it would be easy enough to get backing plates in.

I bought a bunch of toggles, don’t love that for a quarter inch screw I need to drill a half inch hole.
 
Coosa Board is a great material to use. I am at the Chapman School of Seamanship taking a course on how to become a marine surveyor. We covered several types of coring material as well as fiberglass material and Coosa is very popular. This week we toured Eastman Boat factory, they make power catamarans, no wood used at all...everything is either fiberglass or Coosa and one other material I cannot remember the name of. That material is made from metal shavings and they use it as a backing plate for the 300+ hp outboards. I can email them if you wish. But since you have the coosa already, I would just use that.

Good luck, I feel your pain, I should re-bed my stanchions but I am afraid of the work involved, I will probably do it from the outside only (they are still solid)

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Coosa is great as in many applications it s more than core and doesn’t have to be glassed.

For core, I think it s hard to beat divinycel. Light weight, closed cell (can’t absorb water) and easy to cut. But, as a core you need multiple layers of glass to make sure it won’t crush. I built my little classic sailboat using divinycel for all the frames, deck, and hull below waterline.
 

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