Laminating the Hull

For a good portion of the summer it was too hot and humid to do any fiberglassing because of the finicky nature of epoxy and the shop isn't climate controlled, but I bet we could have hopped on this if we had to. I've been reading up on the topic and you can pretty much epoxy in most conditions. I've just been scared since the catastrophe that happened to the Wormhole fiberglassing her. We had a span of good weather for about three days last week and took advantage of them. There were some disappointments with some discoloration of the wood and we really can't track down the cause. It's a streaking and a lightening of color from one epoxied section to the next, possibly due to the epoxy aging in the cup even though it is still workable. The use of laquer thinner may have prevented that, or may have hastened it, I'm not sure. Making a fresh batch of epoxy for every section may have prevented it as well. Like I said, we aren't sure. It's not overly noticeable and when the varnish gets on there it will hopefully be even less noticeable. Either way, we stuck to our guns and got it done. Perhaps we can get her in the Philly wooden boat show this fall (OCT. 8).

She has since been sanded down again and is getting ready for fiberglass tape down the keel and stems for structure. Basically we laid out the glass and painted on the epoxy to laminate the board by wetting out the glass with the brush, we then squeegeed off the exess epoxy so the glass didn't float in any epoxy puddles creating waves that might get sanded off and create a weak spot in the glass if it gets sanded through. That Lam coat leaves air pockets in the weave below the glass and above it so the next coat (which we did in two hours while the first coat was still curing to have that chemical bond between layers) fills in those gaps, and is called the fill coat. The next coat (also done in less than 2 hours) plops a layer on top of the glass and can be sanded (if need be) without sanding into the glass itself. We had some lumpy spots and dry spots so we even did a fourth (Hot coat) really thin within the two hour time frame again. Then the next day we sanded with the longboard and 100 grit paper. It needs more sanding before we get to the fiberglass tape runner and then another full coat of epoxy. There are probably a half dozen different ways to approach what we did and we will figure out what works best for us along the way.







Pretty cool bucket sculpture. Look at that color of the wood on that boat! NICE!









Hah! You get to see what it looks like right side up!






My dad is pretty proud of the boat. We haven't come up with a name yet. I was tossing around the idea of Kindred Spirit. Kinda too pretentious maybe.

And here are some of the other fruits of summers labor! Those feckin tomatoes are incredible!!!