Re: When to add stern str

Posted by LeeG on May 30, 2005

You can put it on any time as long as the surface doesn't have wild threads...so you can let the wetout coat cure partially,,scrape the wild threads on the darted section, apply a fill coat over the whole hull, lay the bias strip of dry cloth on the wet fill coat,,and brush on a little more 'poxy. The way to handle strips of cloth is to not use sticky gloves. So double glove then take the wet one off. Also using a circular cutting blade enables you to do all the cutting without moving any cloth around. Lay a piece of glass cloth on a 4mm sheet of plastic, put a ruler down and cut along it with the circular blade. It's 10X easier then doing it freehand with scissors or a single razor blade. You shouldn't have to move a strip of bias cut cloth more than a couple times, the more you move it the more it'll stretch around. Once a sticky finger touches it it's all over the place. If you're going to put on one bias strip on the stern you might as well put on four narrow ones 1/2"-3/4" x 8" right at the high wear spot on the keel right before the bottom panel turns up. It may look kludgy at first but one layer of 6oz cloth on the stern will wear through in a summers use if you lift and drag the kayak a short distance on sand.

One thing that's not really dealt with well on these kits (except for the Arctic Hawk) is making the ends accomodating to a high wear rub strip BEFORE glassing. The 4mm bottom panels come together to a very fine edge,,which concentrates a lot of wear onto a very narrow strip. You can layer on lots of strips of cloth,,of various types,, but it requires LOTS of fairing in for a small narrow strip that actually gets the wear. If you put a flat spot on the keel leading/trailing edge about 8" long it'll leave a place to layer on a thickened bead of 80/20 cabosil/wood flour that can be formed/faired in while it's curing and not involve any of the layered edges of cloth that require lots of fairing on the edges where it doesn't get any wear. A 1/8"-3/16" bead of thickened epoxy will be a lot easier to apply and smooth in than a similar thickness of cloth with it's wrapped over edges.

In Response to: When to add stern strip by Mike D on May 30, 2005

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