[Kcoplan]

The knees attach to the main bulkhead. The inside of the knee faces forward and is bolted to the main bulkead. The outside, gelcoated side of the knee faces aft, away from the bulkhead. Reglassing the inside of the knee is not an appearance issue, since no-one ever sees it unless they unbolt the entire knee and remove it.

But I am convinced the glass on the inside of the knee is structural. There is only 3/8" of glass on the outside, aft facing, gelcoated face of the knee. I can't believe that would be enough bury for potted screws to give any sort of hold. And I don't think the loads are purely transverse, since the chainplate root is at an angle, it looks to me like the vector of the chainplate loading will be pulling the root up and "out" from the inside of the knee. ("Out" in this case means away from the inside face of the knee, even though the pull is towards the interior of the knee itself).

There is absolutely no evidence of water intrusion into the buried part of the chainplate - this is purely a preventative maintenance and improvement project.

I am thinking that maybe the best solution is a series of through bolts into the aft, outside, gelcoated face of the knees, with ends of the bolts poking into the new layers of glass. I still plan to rebuild into the inside of the knee, just to maintain the "belt and suspenders" build philosophy of Henri WAUQUIEZ. I want to use titanium so that I will never have to inspect the plates again as long as I own the boat.