CONTINUOUSWAVE

My Montauk 150 manual is very helpful and shows the size, type, and general location of all the glassed-in reinforcement pads. But the location is not very specific.

A Whaler Customer Service Representative suggested using a stud finder to locate the pads I'm interested in. So I tried that. My problem is that I can't get signals to repeat reliably enough for me to be sure I've properly located a pad. And some pads seem to be in places the diagram in the manual suggests there is no pad.

Is there a technique I'm missing?

I believe you are looking for embedded material in the hull, as shown in this diagram from the 2016 150 MONTAUK owner's manual:



You can deduce the approximate location of the embedded material from the drawing, which appears to have been made to scale.

Regarding use of a stud-finder to locate the embedded material: that sounds like an excellent method. To test the sensitivity of the device you are using which apparently has failed to locate any material, perform a test:

--place a small block of wood of size and thickness similar to the embedded material in the boat behind a thin plastic material such as a polyethylene sheet;

--use your particular stud-finder and try to detect the location of the wood behind the plastic sheet;

--if your particular stud-finder fails to detect the wood, then it probably won't be useful in finding the wood embedded in the boat hull;

--try a different stud-finder, perhaps one with more sensitivity (or a fresh battery).

Another method to locate embedded material is to tap the hull with a plastic hammer, listening for a change in the report (sound) of the tap. Usually there will be a noticeable change in the sound produced by tapping when you are tapping on a reinforced area. However, I would expect the stud-finder method would be more precise.