Re: Hull Fiberglass=Fear

Posted by Mark Camp on Jul 20, 2004

I am most of the way done with glassing the bottom of my first boat. I haven't a clue what I am doing but you are welcome to my experiences so far.

Wrinkles have not been a problem. In fact, the glass fabric seems to have an uncanny way of smoothing out, even if it has to stretch in one area and not in another, or to stretch around a double-curved surface. It is rather strange stuff. You will see what I mean. I have been using a wide cheap yellow plastic scraper, plus on the sides where I am running into problems, I am using a china bristle brush with bristles cut down to 3/4 inch, plus the above scraper to remove excess.

I think you asked about cutting out wrinkles, ie, cutting darts. On my boat, there ARE two places, on the sides amidships at the greatest curvature where the wrinkles were just too huge to divide up into little wrinkles and then flatten out. Maybe a skilled person could do it, but I didn't worry, I just cut darts where needed, all the way from sheer to chine, and overlapped the entire excess "triangle" and epoxied it down, so the cloth was lapped or doubled there. Then when the goo was solid but not cured, I scraped the exposed edge down fair with the surface with a carbide scraper.

Note that on my boat, I followed the very limited instructions and did the glass in two halves, down the middle, but I ended up with the exact same two darts I would have if I used a single sheet, like you. And it would have saved putting a seam down the middle. So I think you are not creating any additional need for darts. To glass with no darts, I would have had to lay the cloth on the bias, and of course that would create more seams.

I must admit that the seam down the keel line is turning out fine without much effort at all. I tried the spit test and the scraped surfaces, which are milky white, disappear when wet.

The goo is easier to scrape when it scrapes up nice curls, but the curls feel a little gummy rather than dry, as they do when the goo is cured.

In Response to: Re: Hull Fiberglass=Fear by dave stanley on Jul 20, 2004

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