Re: More advice needed

Posted by Howard on Jul 24, 2005

ok....you sorted out the key hole cockpit stuff perfectly.

as for the glassing...a couple tips here.

1) watch for outgassing. that is when the temperature is rising during the glassing phase. the wood will expel air which will then put little bubbles in your finish. the temperature must be even and preferable decreasing. in my workhop i keep a themometer...and usually will do glassing late in the afternoon where the temperature will go down during the process.

2) work on the low end of temperature range to give yourself plenty of time for the cure to set-up. you are doing large pieces and you want to ensure that you get plenty of time to wet out the cloth properly.

3) the 2oz deck glass can be challenging to wet out properly. particularly the areas where you have multiple layers. make sure you get these multiple layers of cloth wetted out (i think you have already completed this step....so nbd). in the future...for the reinforcement layers in front and behing the coamining, i would actually wet out each layer...then put the addiitonal layer on wet it out...and then the final layer.

4) when you do the sides...make sure you did a good job of sanding the chines and shear prior to the final layer of glass. you want a nice smooth surface.

5) rolling the final layer of glass over the shear can be tricky. i would use a layer of packing tape on the deck to control the overlap and ensure that i did not get too much epoxy where i did not want it. this is a step that can get a bit messy and you want to watch your cure so you can come back and trim it neat while the epoxy is green.

as for your question on the sheer....

if it is done right, you have 2 oz with a 4 oz overlap on the sheer. thats a reasonable amount of glass. i have not seen anybody add a rail on the hawk. my advice would echo the other contributors....learn to paddle properly...and you should not hit it that much.

In Response to: More advice needed by Crystal on Jul 24, 2005

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