| 1/5-- The boat's off the mold. I didn't have any help available, so I took it off by myself. I removed the center station molds, slid in under the boat and over the strongback and just stood up. I knew how light it should be, but was still surprised by just how little it weighs. It also surprised me how flexible and wobbly it is before the inside glass and gunwales. |  |
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The wrinkles on the outside of the hull, shown on the previous page, were fixed by scraping down until the first glass fiber was exposed and then the area was built up with more resin. Fortunately, they were all in curved areas of the hull so the built-up area fairs into the hull nicely. It only added about .030" -.060" of resin. Now the inside is ready to sand. |
| Early in the morning before glassing the inside. The inside of the hull was sanded, scraped, shaved, sanded, scraped, shaved, sanded... you get the picture. I used a curved trim scraper and a curved cabinet scraper after doing the major cleanup with a small curved spokeshave. There wasn't much filling to do between strips, the extra time and care I spent planking paid off. |  |
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It took longer to apply the first coat of resin than on the outside due to a more awkward working position and that I
couldn't talk my helper into taking a day off work to help me. The stems, especially the very narrow bow, were pretty touchy. I had a few problems with the glass unraveling... what a mess! But I was expecting it and just made sure I touched the edges of the glass as little as possible. |
| In fiberglass work, like pouring concrete, I figure once you get your hands into it, you've screwed up. However in the stems, I found the best tool to wet out the glass was my gloved hand. even so, the stems came out a little lumpy: a little hand work is needed. | |
| Cured and trimmed, ready for sanding. I made the same mistake on the inside that I did on the outside though: Several places I've read say Don't fill the staple holes!, but I thought I knew better. I carefully matched the wood color, filled and sanded. With cedar, two things happen: first of all, any end-grain turns dark when wetted with resin. So no matter how nicely the color matches dry, with the resin, it gets dark. ...every single one. |  |
| Second, cedar is porous enough that the filler stains the area
around the patch fairly deep into the grain and a lot of sanding was required
to get the resulting lighter splotches out. Particularly difficult on an
inside curve. I would have saved over a day of labor and gotten the same
results by not filling the staple holes.
I only put two coats of resin on the inside. This will save weight and the texture of the cloth may help with traction. I was a little concerned about controlling the resin inside where the excess all runs to pool in the keel, but the squeegee-ing went pretty well. I kept close tabs on the resin and allowed the temperature to slowly drop from 72 to 64 degrees while it set up to prevent outgassing, and pinholes. (a patternmaker's trick that some builders question, but it always has worked well for me, and I've had some poor results when the temp was allowed to rise during the initial cure) The second coat went on very quickly. After it was on I squeegeed off the excess and kept working runs and thick spots out it until it was too stiff to work any more. After it cured overnight, the hull is MUCH stiffer. The two layers of glass create a very solid structure. All in all, I'm very happy with the way this came out. The hard part is over, the rest is pretty basic woodworking. I can actually imagine putting this thing in the water! | |