This morning I started out by taking the braces and clamps off and sweeping out the hull. Did some serious cleaning, sweeping and threw away all the cups and mixers I'd been using with the System 3 epoxy as I've basically run out. I'll use what's left for little projects, but as today was to be a big glassing day it was time to switch to the Aeromarine Epoxy I'd ordered. Flipped the board for the mixing area and cleaned the rest of the tools.
Then I grabbed the orbital sander, put on some 60 grit paper and went over the entire hull. I went through six disks before I finished as the epoxy was still a little soft, but I wanted to smooth everything down, getting rid of the random bumps and drips of epoxy as this fiberglass was to be the last layer on the inside of the bottom. Swept and vacuumed the hull again.
Laid down some fresh poly and started cutting sections of the 38" wide 10 oz fiberglass. These sections go from chine to chine across the keel and overlap each other about one inch.
Then... It was go time! Start this fiberglassing project and there's no stopping until you're done! And you've got to hustle as you've got about 25-30 minutes before the epoxy sets off, so...
Are you ready for this?
Roll a section of fiberglass on my PVC pipe. Mix a 15 oz batch of resin. Pour it in the hull on one side. Spread it on one side all the way to the edge of the chine and overlapping the section lines and working down towards the keel. Move around to the other side, pull the epoxy up from the keel, again spreading from section line to section line and all the way to the edge of the chine. Take a chip brush and sweep side-to-side smoothing out and evening the epoxy. Move back to the other side and repeat. Grab the rolled up fiberglass and carefully leaving about an inch hanging off the chine, roll it down the hull keeping it lined up with that section line, hustle around to the other side and roll it up and over the edge. Back to the first side, grab the roller and gently but firmly roll from the keel towards the chine pushing the fiberglass into the resin while smoothing out any small folds and forcing the bubbles out, and then around to do the other side. Then it's time to make more epoxy and using a brush fill in the dry spots and make sure the glass is flat.
Whew!
Repeat!
Midway through putting in the sections of glass one of my friends came by to help. I promptly put her to work right in the middle of everything. She did a great job!
When we got up towards the bow and the second to the last section things started getting harder. I had started at the stern as I knew that would be the easy area and a good place to learn, but now... These last two sections at the bow are compound curves (bending in two dimensions) and the second to the last section required getting my hands right down in the epoxy. We got the epoxy on the ply and the glass rolled across and then while she worked the glass with the roller I used my fingers and palms to work the glass pushing and pulling to get it flat and without any folds or voids.
Then it was the last section. We got the ply coated and then together we lowered the glass into the hull. The curves here are just way too extreme to have any hope of keeping the glass flat without slashing it (cutting it in the middle of a fold and overlapping the pieces) a few times. This time she had her hands in the epoxy and again did a great job working everything down smooth. I took the last of our batch of epoxy and with the brush hit the dry areas and she worked the epoxy and glass getting rid of the voids and smoothing everything until it was close to perfect as it could be.
Everything needed a couple hours to set, so she went home and I went and ran some errands then came back and mixed up more epoxy then filled the weave and called it a night.
Tomorrow night I'll flip the hull assuming I can find some suck... uh, friends :-) to come help. There's no way I'm gonna try this on my own!
8 Hours