If n' When II -- Hull Fiberglas

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The Green River trip was enjoyed by all. We had 2 canoes and 6 kayaks (10 paddlers and a lazy mascot) for a week on the Stillwater Canyon section of the river. Departed Moab on September 30th for Mineral Bottom, and returned by jetboat from the confluence with the Colorado on October 5th. The "Evil Gecko" prepared a trip report from his perspective that has been posted to the web. The trip did slow down the progress on the project, but the relaxation was well worth it! Meanwhile, cooler weather means more time working on landscaping (at least in theory,) and even less time for the project.

The installation of the external stems didn't get documented, but went quite well. It required a little patience to get the curve planed to match the prelaminated stems, but didn't require many clamps as a result. The stems were planed down to match the hull lines. Because some of the stripes were slightly thicker than others, I did need to do a fair (no pun intended!) amount of fairing with the hand plane and then finished up with the Porter Cable ROS. I was pleasantly surprised about how well the strips fit, with only a couple little gaps requiring some slivers to hide them.

I decided to use a seal coat of epoxy prior to the first layer of cloth, thinking it would be easier to avoid starving the cloth. I used Raka 127 Epoxy with their 350 non-blushing hardner. I'm very pleased with the product, and find it gives me adequate working time, even with temperatures still in the 90°s. The epoxy brought out the color in the wood much more vividly than the water I used to raise the wood grain before the final sanding.

I used 6 oz. fiberglas cloth for the initial layer on the hull. I'm still not sure if I'm going to use the 6 oz. or the 3.7 oz. fabric for the remainder of the project. I may use 6 oz. inside the hull, and then use the lighter fabric on both sides of the deck. The lighter fabric is a much tighter weave - we'll see how it goes!

I started applying the epoxy for this layer with a squeegee, just as I had with the seal coat, but switched to a cheap bristle brush for the sides. Of course the brush added challenges of its own - leaving individual bristles behind at the most inopportune moments. After the epoxy began to set, I knocked it down with the squeegee, leaving a layer approximately the same thickness all over the boat. I ended up using a little Saran Wrap on the stems to get the fabric to stay down. This worked fairly well - I didn't have to cut and lap the fabric, but did end up with a couple small bubbles that I'll sand out and repair when I install the abrasion strip.

I added a second layer of cloth on the bottom - in this case, I used 3.7 oz cloth.

As expected, I did end up with threads from the edge of the second layer that hung down from the fabric. Several people suggested using a scraper after the epoxy had reach a "green set" stage to remove these threads. I tried it, and it worked well, but I was concerned about the possibility of leaving white streaks in the glass that wouldn't disappear with the third coat. As a result, I waited for the epoxy to set, then sanded away the threads. Much more work! Next time I'll listen, Joe!

Build sequence is always a matter of opinion. I elected to glass the outside of the hull before starting to strip the deck. I felt that this would give the hull more stability and rigidity when the forms were detached from the strongback and the boat was flipped into saddles for the next phase.

After the deck was fabricated, sanded, glassed on the outside, removed from the hull, forms removed from the hull, and the inside of the hull sanded, I fabricated blocks for both the bow and the stern from cedar. This seems to be the lightest way to fill this area that is difficult to glass and seal. I picked up a trick from Vaclav Stejskal of One Ocean Kayaks for sanding the hull interior. The primary tool used was a 36 grit, 7 inch sanding disk mounted on a 5" sanding pad for an electric drill. Made LOTS of dust, but I was able to clean up and fair the hull interior, ready for glassing in less than two hours. Vaclav put together a book covering his methods and techniques. I've found several hints that made it well worth it's cost.