We finished laminating the other half of the starboard float today. We spent several hours prepping the hull for the glass by sanding the epoxy and glass applied yesterday where the two sides overlap. Sanding pure epoxy and glass is much harder than sanding putty and foam. I am very glad I did the majority of the fairing before applying the glass. So we didn't start mixing epoxy until early afternoon when temperatures in our greenhouse-like workshop were in the 90s. Nonetheless, the glass and epoxy went on quite well. We did set the paint trays with the epoxy on top of ice packs to keep the epoxy from kicking too fast.
In this view, you can just barely see the reinforcing strip along the hull. This was applied after the full laminate was complete. We find it is best to let one layer start to set before applying extra layers of fabric. Otherwise we end up with too much epoxy and the layers are more likely to distort. You can also see the peel-ply wrap around the stern to hold the edges of the fabric tight while it sets. Pointy or complex intersections like this are difficult to get tight. You have to think about how the overlapping edges interact so that one edge doesn't loosen another edge. I have had mixed success in getting this type of intersection to come out tight and fully bonded. Peel-ply definitely helps.
Here is the deck of the float (on its side) all laminated and awaiting final cutouts for ports. Of course first we will do one more pass with fairing putty to fill the weave of the glass and blend the few unavoidable seams. Then we can add the bow and access ports. I think we will finish this float in a couple of weeks and then we are on to the port float.
No comments:
Post a Comment