It was a little cooler tonight, 58 degrees, so I turned the heater up a little and started by trimming the glass on the edge of the panel that got its first coat last night. Fiberglass with resin that hasn't fully cured is referred to as "green" and as long as it's still flexible and green it cuts relatively easy. Like the past couple nights I took a razor, ran it down the edge of the panels and trimmed the excess glass right off.
I read a trick somewhere about creating smooth lines in the resin/fiberglass by laying down blue painters tape along your line and fiberglassing right on the tape. While the resin is still green you can run a blade along the line and pull the tape and glass right up. I put down the tape along the section of the transom that will get glassed later and started cleaning up the transom. I spent almost an hour smoothing out the inside of the transom and scraping excess peanut butter in the original fillets. They're pretty rough when made with the coarse sawdust so I mixed a batch of resin, microballoons (just what they sound like, microscopic spheres of hollow resin balls) and Cab-o-sil (really fine powder). The combination works just like peanut butter but is much smoother and the microballoons add bulk without weight. I made a lager round ended tool by cutting a plastic putty knife to shape and troweled the new peanut butter in over the old fillet to fill it in and smooth it out.
That new fillet needed some time to set up so I mixed a batch of plain resin and spread it over the panel I finished last night. Easy peasy, but used enough time to let the fillet set up.
Back to the transom I put resin on the wood and let it soak for a few minutes and then carefully laid the two pieces of glass I had cut earlier and rolled them into the fillets and the resin. I used two pieces because trying to handle one piece 4' by 8' and work it over the fillets would have been a nightmare to manage. I also overlapped the glass in the middle of the transom adding strength in a high stress area. Here's what it looks like.
The pink is the color of the resin when the microballoons are added and you can see the blue tape under the glass.
Long night, but I knew it would be...
4.5 Hours