I have spent the last 3 days (about 4 hours a day) epoxy/fibreglassing the first side of the boat. The weather has been at last co-operating, at least on the first two days. Today was not so good, the temperature in the tent didn't go over 16/17 degrees, barely. The epoxy wasn't flowing as well as the first two days, and that added time to the third day's glassing.
Anyway, I have one side done. Only one to go!
The glassing went better than I hoped for. Doing a short section at a time worked well. I am particularly pleased to have decided to use the peel ply on top of the fibreglassed surface. I am pretty sure this is going to save me a lot of epoxy, as I don't have to apply any more coats on top of the first one. Also, it will same me a lot of back breaking sanding, and I won't have to deal with clouds of (horrible) epoxy dust. That's the best part! I hate epoxy dust...
I am going to leave the peel ply in place for as long as practicable ( it can be left on for long periods according te the WEST site) as it will keep the surface that will take the paint clean and grease free. Of course, I couldn't resist peeling a small area to see what the surface looks like: it's slightly textured to the weave of the peel ply, and that should hold the paint better than shiny epoxy, even when sanded down.
I managed to keep the dogs epoxy free too, so far anyway.
No pictures as yet, I'll try to take some that shows the epoxy/peel ply surface, although I'm not too sure how well this is going to show.
Good to see it's going well.
ReplyDeleteI've found that if there's an area that aboslutely won't lay down right, do the best you can and move on. It'll come out better to sand it down and patch it later. Beats messing up the whole job.
A friend and I once redid a canoe with fiberglass. It's harder than it looks to get a really good job.
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