First thing to do this morning was to cut the ribs apart to get them off the table. Basically all I did was cut them apart, tomorrow I'll trim the excess off. I needed to focus all my attention on getting the big fiberglassing done.
Then I got started by sanding the inside of the hull. All the areas to be fiberglassed got well sanded and then I wiped down the inside with water and ammonia. Next I grabbed the large screwdriver and hammer and knocked the peanut butter drool off the sides of the stringers. It had run down when I epoxied the stringers to the hull and I just now got around to dealing with it.
I checked the phone to see what time it was and discovered I had missed a call from Brian Goettler and he was offering to help. Heck yes I'll take the help! I called him back and he said he'd come over.
I got started cutting fiberglass tape, four inch and six inch wide strips of 10oz fiberglass. I got a bunch cut and then Brian showed up and I gave him the grand tour and the rundown on what I wanted to get done today. Then I set him to cutting the rest of the 10oz strips while I hustled to put fillets in the sides-to-chine joints and then put on those four and six inch strips of 10oz.
Brian finished cutting the 10oz so I had him start cutting the 24oz woven roving into six and eight inch strips. Now 24oz roving is really heavy stuff and it looks like you're working with yarn and it's tough stuff to cut. I didn't watch Brian cutting it, but I'm sure he got a workout! :-)
He finished cutting the fiberglass and I sicked him on an engineering project. Trying to get 24oz woven roving to wet out with epoxy is a completely different game and the only way to really do it is to lay the roving on a piece of poly and pour, pour, pour the epoxy on and work it in with your hands (in gloves of course!). Then you pick up the piece of glass and put it where you want it on the boat. Now Brian's an engineer and what he came up with was a heck of a lot better than anything I would have done. Me, I would have slapped something together that probably would have worked and been a pain. What Brian came up with is almost a piece of art.
Crying shame it'll disappear tomorrow.
Next Brian painted the outboard side of the stringer with epoxy and I followed behind with peanut butter for the fillet. It's an acute angle and needed a fair amount. And then it was on to installing the roving.
The process of installing the roving was a controlled chaotic treat. I mixed epoxy 15 ounces at a time, Brian put the roving in the trough and poured epoxy over it and worked it in, then he passed the piece over the side to me and I placed it on the hull/stringers. He kept me running! First we laid in the six inch wide pieces and then the eight inch wide pieces. There was epoxy on everything, but I didn't care. We were gettin' it done! We got the outboard side of the stringers finished and then he had to go.
I took a brief break and then got started on the inboard side of the stringers. Painted them with epoxy and then started epoxying the eight inch strips of roving and I figured out mighty quick just how good Brian had gotten at doing it. It took me a while to get up to his speed. It took me longer to do as I was running back and forth, in and out of the hull, but eventually I got the stringers finished.
I used the last of the six inch wide roving to glass the transom to the sides and the hull after putting fillets in the joints. The sides were a little messy to do as the roving had to work around the Versalam, but I eventually managed to smooth it all out without having to cut anything.
Last I went all the way forward and put a piece of 10oz glass in the joint between the blocking for the flotation tank and the hull.
So there's now 20oz of fiberglass in the sides-to-chines joint; 48oz of roving on the outboard side of the stringers-to-hull joint; 24oz of roving on the inboard side of the stringers-to-hull joint, 24oz of roving on the sides-to-transom and transom-to-hull joints; and in the places where it overlaps in the corners upwards of 72oz of roving. I don't think anything's going anywhere. :-)
I'm beat and sore tonight. I think I'll have more help tomorrow, so we'll work on the ribs and forward bulkhead.
Oh, and I had my very first major pot of epoxy go off on me tonight. I got to screwing around cutting the roving to size for the transom area and forgot I had a batch of epoxy sitting in the cup ready to go. When I picked the cup up it was almost to hot to hang on to and it was starting to smoke! I poured out what would pour out and left the rest to harden in the cup. Gotta pay more attention to that!
11 Hours (me) + 4.5 Hours (Brian) = 15.5 Hours