If your lamiating corners make some bog up and lay a fillet in the seem your joining and run a paddle pop stick down along it to shape it and your glass will lay in the corner better.Originally Posted by Kevinwd1
If your lamiating corners make some bog up and lay a fillet in the seem your joining and run a paddle pop stick down along it to shape it and your glass will lay in the corner better.
And if you go to the local reject shop you can generally buy paddle pop sticks of varying width, I've found the really wide ones are great for mixing small amounts of resin etc.
One of the sad signs of our times is that we have demonized those who produce, subsidized those who refuse to produce and canonized those who complain.
Thomas Sowell
Found a icing piping bag worked well to quickly/cleanly lay the fillet ,then formed the radius with a disposable spoon .
Looks like you’ve done a great job , thanks for sharing. Matt
A bad days fishing has got to be better than any day at work......
Starting fibreglass the transom on Saturday.Planned on starting early to get the cooler part of the day but things came up and didn’t start until 1pm.Had a few issues with getting the glass matting to conform to the beveled edge,radius and tab onto the hull bottom and sides all in one go .We had to cut the glass mat with a scalpel in a few spots to get it sit down while wetting out and had a couple of small air bubbles in a few places.The resin started to go a little milky on the second layer of combination mat .Waited for the fibreglass to cool down before putting on another layer of chopped mat .Had planned on doing the whole job in one day but only got to layers of combination mat and 1 layer of chopped mat over the entire transom before calling it a day .Will put the extra 2 layers of combination mat in the corners next week.Definitely had a few issues and would do things a bit different next time .
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What percentage hardener did you use?
You have to be careful putting in big coves, as the bog super-heats the resin and glass that follow.
Your glass work looks pretty good to me. Not much overheating to worry about.
I'd be going back to the parts where you sliced the glass to get it to "lay down".
The resin was probably going off, in which case the glass will not sit. You should feel the lumpy hardness as you are trying to roll it.
But overall, well done. Very neat work.
Are you going to treat the 90 degree corner to a couple more laminates?
And no disrespect to Nolem, whose advice I have always enjoyed, but if you use an empty 4 litre bucket with a lid that seals well, it is very economical to put 1 litre of acetone in it to keep your 4" brush, rollers, coveing tools, screeds and what-nots resin free and reuseable. Just try to get out as much resin as you can. It takes days to glug up, but you will catch it well before then.
The 4" cheapie brushes are still like $4.00 each, and when you are glassing for days on end with transom, stringers and floor, the brush cost will very quickly send you to the poor house!
Regarding clean-up, as Nolem has pointed out, Acetone is not a good idea on skin. AA sells a beaut SEPTONE hand cleaner called ELIMINATOR that removes all forms of paint and resin (both poly and epoxy), and is very economical. From memory, about $50 for a 4 litre pump pack which will easily see out the entire build. Its even good for getting grease off.
Keep up the great work. It's a joy to watch the progress.
Last edited by giddyup58; 26-12-2022 at 12:04 PM. Reason: Advised wrong product
Used 1% harder and will be putting another 2 layers of matback and one layer of choppy over areas where we cut the glass.I think we failed to push the mat into some of the bevel/radius area with enough slack to enable it to stick to both the cove and bevel .Once the first layer had become very tacky it was a little hard to adjust next layer where this occurred.Cutting the glass fixed this but not ideal.
You can see in the photo a bit of white discolouration on the plywood area. Don’t think it’s to bad but but I’m no expert?
This has been a big learning curve so hopefully the extra layers in the corners should be a bit easier
It is all a learning curve, unfortunately by the time you're really good at it, the jobs finished! On the throw away stuff, I see what you mean, but I got a bulk lot of 1"/2"/3" brushes for about .60c each, if I was doing a big job again, cleaning better quality stuff would be the go. I am very much a home handyman at glass work, but have decades of experience repairing surfboards, so the actual "doing" is no worries. Getting supplies would be a challenge now I think, almost everything you need is back ordered, delayed delivery or something. I needed some stuff for my trailer, all my local shops had bits and pieces, online had limited stocks and delivery time of two weeks, I ended up finding a place in ?Brisbane that had the stuff I needed, but it still hasn't arrived yet.
Yesterday we finished the extra two layers of fibreglass in the corners of the transom.The first layer went 100mm onto the transom core and 100mm into the sides and bottom of the hull .Second layer overlapped the first by an extra 50mm,then finished off with a layer of 225 choppy.Things went so much easier this time .
Today we started to fit the girders and grind ready for glassing them in place .I’m thinking of using two layers of combination mat (225chop/400db)to tab the girders in place .The same way Giddyup does his stringers but finish with a layer of 225 choppy so I can grind and paint with flowcoat later.Is that what you did Giddyup?
Hoping to get these done before the new year
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Adding the choppy will not do anything for strength. As you said, it's just there as a sacrificial layer in case you need to sand.
I don't usually apply that layer when flowcoat is involved, as the flowcoat is so thick, it easily fills the weave.
But if it makes you feel better about the job, by all means do it. The weight penalty is almost non existent. Just time and money.
For bigger areas that do need to have the DB grain perfectly filled, (eg floors), I always use peel ply, which has the added benefit of keeping all contaminates off the glass until you are ready to move on, eg. paint/ carpet/flowcoat.
When flowcoating I’m assuming you have to sand the area first before applying.Is it ok to sand the double bias to prepare for flowcoat .I won’t put any choppy on if I don’t need to ,just unsure of how to properly prepare double bias surface for flowcoating Thought it was a bad idea to sand double bias ?
Got a little bit done over the holidays.The girders are glassed in and it went quite smoothly .I did stuff up by not finishing with choppy when tabing in the girders into the side of the boat.I thought it would be alright to give the double bias a light sand in prep for flowcoating but now realise its not really a good idea .Will worry about that later
Removed the floor in the front of the boat and started grinding up the area.I brought a dust shroud for the angle grinding which worked quite well in keeping the dust at bay until the vacuum cleaner blew up
Removed the small outer stringer and ground up in prep for new stringer.The strake area seemed very thin and looked like it had a few cracks in it ,so I put a 2 layers of combination mat and a layer of choppy there to strengthen it up .Not sure if that was necessary ? but it’s done now.Checked the underside of the strake with a straight edge after doing this and still looks nice and flat
Spent hours getting the new stringer to sit right.Getting the stringer to go from the flat strake area into the angled back part of the hull was a real pain .There will be a few spots where an extra bit of thickened resin will be needed to bed in the stringer.Hoping to glass in the stringer next weekend
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Looking good and no harm putting a bit extra in places were you have seen a problem it piece of mind an now’s the time to do it ,after thought fixes nothing.
Nice work and great to see the progress shots. Matt
A bad days fishing has got to be better than any day at work......
Was hoping to start glassing in the stringer this weekend but ended up changing the cradle .The hull had started to bow away from the cradle and checking with a straight edge showed a concave bow on the outside of the hull between the rear bulkhead and the transom..Probably should have left in some of the stringers between the rear bulkhead and transom to support the hull better .I’m guessing the fibreglass that was put on the floor area when glassing in the transom has shrunk and pulled the hull away from the cradle?.
I changed the original cradle support to 4 pieces of timber running lengthways along the hull and screwed the hull to them
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Original cradle setup
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*Should have left some of the stringers in this area ?
image.jpg Bow in hull
H image.jpg Hull screwed down to timber and bow removed
Hopefully when the stringers and bulkheads are glassed in the bow will be gone
Any feedback appreciated
Should have taken more pictures ,hope it makes sense
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