Day 18 - Glassing the hull

Jimmy DeMonie showed up to help out with installation of the fiberglass. With Jimmy's help, the work went along very quickly.

First, we put a strip of fiberglass cloth over the top of the boat, cut it to length, and then made some adjustments to the fabric at the bow an the stern. This involved some cutting of the fabric to allow us to overlap the fabric. What you are seeing in this first picture is the hull with the white fiberglass cloth draped over it.

After starting in the middle of the boat, and working towards the bow, I began wetting the fabric down with my roller and 8 ounces of resin mixed up. Jimmy followed up close behind with a 6 inch squeegee, to force the resin through the fabric and smooth out any air voids and bumps.

Working towards the bow, the overlap in the fabric is evident at the bow. Jimmie is using the squeegee at the proper angle of 27.94 degrees to the hull of the kayak.

All done with the glassing of the hull. Looks pretty good. It'll cure overnight and tomorrow after work, I'll put on a second coat of fiberglass (along with a reinforcement strip along the keep). Then on Friday, I will put on another coat of resin . Then I'll be able to see if it needs any more resin to smooth out any bumps.

From the squeegeeing action, there was some residual amount of resin that was wasted. It came off pretty foamy. We cleaned off the squeegee in a cup. After about 20 minutes, the foamy resin began to heat up to the point of melting the cup. Within an hour, it was solid as a rock.