Re: damage during portage

Posted by LeeG on Mar 2, 2005

Since this is a one shot boat cost is probably an issue so that'll rule out s-glass,,check out the 3.25oz fineweave e-glass from RAKA and the unidirectional 5oz e-glass. If you pre-glass both sides of the panels with the 3.25 tightweave it'll be a LOT easier to controll the amount used in wetting out and the very fine weave requires hardly any epoxy for fill coats. Eliminating having to glass/wet-out/squeegee/goop the interior will save a significant amount of epoxy. Put one layer 3.25oz on the exterior bottom panels and side panels, two layers on the interior covering the two padders seated area. Two layers on the interior side panels between the two paddlers. Then a 16" patch of the unidirectional under both paddlers tieing to the chines. You can do all that glassing before stitching up with only fillets and thin strips of tightweave over the fillets. Thereafter the exterior gets another layer of fineweave 3.25 with 1" strips over the chines/keel. The tightweave stuff is interesting,,it's not easy to wet-out if the epoxy is not warm/thin but it's got a few attributes worth taking advantage of for your application. You can cut 1" wide strips of it and lay them on wet epoxy without the strips unraveling. Just laying a strip over an area brushed with epoxy is sufficient to wet it out completely. So while it would be tempting to use 1 1/2" 9oz tape for chine/keel joints I'm pretty sure you could lay down five strips of 3.25fine weave for the same amount of epoxy that it would take to wet out the 9oz tape,,and two are sufficient. If you work in 60" sections you can drape the fine cloth over pre-wetted/sealed wood and just watch it fill itself after being smoothed out. After it cures scrape it smooth for any bumps and do the same with another layer. Then again just putting in 4mm would save some time but it wouldn't be as fun getting that extra pound off.

In Response to: Re: 3 MM hull? by Kyle T on Mar 2, 2005

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