Aft Bay Fiberglassing Pt 1

I went over every inch of the aft bay and decided that it was smooth enough to fiberglass.  Up to this point I hadn't glassed any complex areas, just flat and smooth surfaces.  The other boats I build I cut the glass freehand and kinda just figured it out.  Since I want a higher quality finish on this boat I spent a little more time.

I first outlined the area to be fiberglassed with a 3" wide border of blue masking tape.  For the aft bay the fiberglass was to come up each side and overlap the center by 6".  Then I made a paper pattern to use as a guide for cutting the fiberglass.  This was actually the hardest part of the process, paper doesn't conform to curves and bends as well as fiberglass.  Knowing this, I figured that if I'm close with the paper the fiberglass will fall into place.  Luckily I was right.  In the end I had to cut the paper in sections and tape each of the sections together.  Luckily I can use the same pattern for both sides of the aft keel by simply flipping it over.

I used a long metal ruler and a razor to cut along the edges of the pattern.  After each cut I put masking tape on the edge of the material to keep it from raveling.

At this point tape holds the fiberglass in place completely covering the blue tape border outlining the area to be fiberglassed.

The above picture shows the finished product.  It's kinda hard to take pictures with sticky gloves on so I'll describe what the pictures missed.

I wet out the fiberglass with un-thickened epoxy.  Starting with the bottom I worked the epoxy out to the edges and then using a brush, up the sides up to and slightly overlapping the blue border tape.  I went back over everything while it was still wet to make sure that there were no bubbles or anything keeping the fiberglass from laying flat.

Note: I did find a small crumb under the fiberglass near the center.  Doh!  I made a small incision with an x-acto knife in the fiberglass weave and retrieved the crumb.  Then pressed down the fiberglass without any further problem.  After it dried I couldn't even find the problem area.

After the epoxy dried to a "green stage" I ran a razor knife around the lower edge of the blue border and then lifted the border tape up along with the excess fiberglass to form a perfect straight edge.

With the exception of getting a little more epoxy on certain areas that I really wanted to It turned out near perfect.  I really like this technique of applying fiberglass and will continue to refine it while doing the rest of the bays.

Hours this session: 3
Hours total: 144
Hours remaining: 256