Fiberglass woes!

I had some problems with fiberglassing the hull. Nothing that I couldn’t fix, but just taking longer.

To start, the roll of fiberglass I have has what I call a run in the roll. I have been able to work with it up until now, but it caused me some pain with a bubble along the entire port side of the hull. I ended up sanding it down and putting a patch on the entire length of the boat.

I also had a lot wrinkles all over. I took my time as I have done previously, but again I had bubbles that needed to be sanded down and patched. I thing I wound up with about 10 places, so I had to do a lot of rework. One good thing, I will have plenty of coats of epoxy on the hull.

It has been very warm in the garage. About 80 degrees during most of my working sessions. I wonder if that had anything to do with it, but at this point it is water under the boat! ha ha!

If you look closely you can see my pencil marks where I needed to patch and the fiberglass patches

I also have been putting extra fiberglass on the bow. I already have 3 and may do more before laying down a layer of dynel clothe I purchased. I need to see how thick it is. It is still in the packing.

Now I get to re-sand the hull. Shouldn’t take that long, since it is pretty smooth.
I also have some places I will need to use some fairing compound on. The finger joint in the above picture has some dips that I can see.

Progress on Fiberglassing the Hull

I have been working a lot lately including some weekends, so I decided to take a comp day this past Friday to have a 3 day weekend. With this time I was able to finish up the sanding and make a big dent in the hull fiberglassing.  I went back over the entire hull with 120 grit and wiped doing everything. Prior to that this past week, I refilled some of the spots that didn't cure properly and refilled some holes.

Friday I started with one side of the bottom. This takes a full 50' wide piece of fiberglass. The first side I poured epoxy on and spread it with a plastic spreader. I then switched to the roller method, which I thinks works better. I used the roller method on the remaining portions.

Below are a couple of shots before I wetted things out.  This first side took me about 1.5 to 2 hours to mix up a lot of epoxy and spread out.

Saturday I did the other side. Below is the other side of the bottom with the fiberglass laid out before wetting out. I also did coat # 2 on the previous side.

It has been in the lower 90's, so I can take only so much working in the garage in 80 degree temperatures. I got up early this morning and laid out the fiberglass on both the upper side panels. I used blue tape in a couple of areas to hold the fiberglass in place until I could get it wetted out.

Below are both sides before wetting things out.

Here is a picture of the entire boat wetted out, minus the transom. I plan on doing that hopefully this week, maybe as early as tomorrow night after work.

Filling Holes and Sanding!

I went out of town last week for 4 days, so that limited time to work on the boat. But as I have said before, taking the wife to a Bed and Breakfast makes any mess in the garage I make much easier for her to take. I have fun too.

Filling Holes
After I got the hull turned over, I started to work on sanding the rub rails. When I first installed them, I didn't do any of the tapers or angles. I just glued each piece on and decided to use a belt sander to level out when I flipped it. This was a little bit of work. I had some 80 grit, but it was taking a lot of work, so I went to the store and bought 30 and 60 grit. That did the trick! Be careful!

Below are pictures of port and starboard rails. After flipping, I discovered a couple things that I will need to address.
1) I think I will put a very small fillet between at the edge of the hull where the 1st piece was epoxied on. There are a couple places that I see space where water can get in.
2) I also noticed a couple places between the pieces that didn't get filled with epoxy. I am very surprised with this. I put a lot of epoxy on each piece and it pressed out.

Nothing that can't be fixed.

Rub rail

Next up I decided to fill all the holes and the edge you can see above between the bottom and side panels. I know this is supposed to be a round over, but I have a gap that I think needs to filled. I will also round it over as well.

Below you can see where I have filled all the holes.

Filling the edge between the lower and upper panel. 

Also did a large fillet along the keel.

I did all of these in one session and let them cure for a couple of days. As I was packing up to leave, I was walking around and noticed that some of the epoxy was not curing. It was soft and it had been 4-5 days. I used the pre-mixed epoxy in a tube I got from Jamestown Distributors. The only thing I can think of is that I rushed and didn't properly push out a little epoxy before using it. That allows for it to properly mix. I used a couple of tubes and recall just putting the cap on and applying it. My fault!

Below is a section that was not curing. I sanded and use a scraper to get the old stuff out of there and will refill this weekend.  I also noticed a place on the nose block. When sanding epoxy started coming off on the sand paper. I again scrapped it away and will need to reapply in the area. Everything else feels cured and I will notice anything with the sander if there are issues.

I did a side project one evening. I had yet to cut the grab handle on the companion way slide. I cut it out below and will epoxy it to the slide this weekend. 

Next up will be to finish reapplying some areas of the hull with epoxy and to finish sanding. I already started sanding on one side of the hull. I will try to get all of this completed this weekend, so I can start on the fiberglassing next.

I am also reading up on some of the blogs about extra fiberglass on the bow and keel area. I think I am going to install extra wood on the bottom of the keel like some other builders did. They installed it forward and back of the center board. More to come with this.