splinters glassed outer hull.......finaly!

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Rabbit
Posts: 121
Joined: Tue Sep 06, 2011 8:20 pm
Location: Downunder

splinters glassed outer hull.......finaly!

Post by Rabbit »

welp, after much drama, the first bit of glassing is done! unfortunalyly the lighting wasn't the best so the pics look a bit crap, and the side profile looks mottled when it isn't.

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naturally i made a few mistakes. i think the first of which was ignoring conventional wisdom and instead following manufacturer's recommendations. for sheathing they recommend coating the timber first with their thinner/preservative in the epoxy, waiting 10 mins for any bubbles to show up before putting on the glass and wetting it out. this might work when you have several people to lift the cloth over the hull and lay it down carefully, but not so much for a single operator. it took a lot of rolling and pulling to get the humps out. even then, just when i thought it was all ok, i found a few spots where there was small humps, by which time the epoxy was too hard to to press these down. they were full of epoxy, so i'm not going to bother trying to flatten and patch.

now, the epoxy manufacturer claims that their formulation has insect repellent in it, and indeed it does have a pleasant citronella smell. however.... it wasn't very effective. i ended up suffering from brian hanson syndrome. there is even a few bugs under the glass. in years to come some scientist will find my canoe and treasure the fossilised remains of bugs from 2012....
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Glen Smith
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Joined: Sat May 08, 2004 9:08 am
Location: Baie-St-Paul, Quebec, Canada

Re: splinters glassed outer hull.......finaly!

Post by Glen Smith »

Very nice. Mistakes and bugs just add to the character.
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HighPlainsDrifter
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Joined: Tue Mar 22, 2011 9:30 pm
Location: Brookings, SD USA

Re: splinters glassed outer hull.......finaly!

Post by HighPlainsDrifter »

So, this is the hull of hard knocks and she looks none the worse for her ride on the wind. I tried to find the cracks. I could not......... Congratulations. She looks great
Rabbit
Posts: 121
Joined: Tue Sep 06, 2011 8:20 pm
Location: Downunder

Re: splinters glassed outer hull.......finaly!

Post by Rabbit »

HighPlainsDrifter wrote:So, this is the hull of hard knocks and she looks none the worse for her ride on the wind. I tried to find the cracks. I could not......... Congratulations. She looks great
thanx hpd :)

alas, were that only true. from the distance of the side profile you don't see them, but as you get closer you start to notice some of them. some cracks did disappear, but some needed a fair bit of filling. even though i did use thickener and wood flour, i didn't thicken it enough i guess, and as a result, even though it sealed the crack on the outside and looked opaque, when you get under the stations and look from the inside of the hull, even after glassing you can see daylight in a few places. at least it's sealed and when its done it should float :laughing
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Glen Smith
Posts: 3719
Joined: Sat May 08, 2004 9:08 am
Location: Baie-St-Paul, Quebec, Canada

Re: splinters glassed outer hull.......finaly!

Post by Glen Smith »

One of my brothers made a comment about seeing light through the bottom of one of my boats. I told him that the gap between two strips was filled with clear epoxy so it was actually one of the strongest parts of the boat. :wink
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