Work Day 14

Today I did two major things:
1.  Finished laying down fiberglass 24 oz layers on the boat floor made of plywood.  This created the laminate thickness of 1/8" that is required for the floor. Then I waited for it to dry. I left the fiberglass to hang over the ends, this way when I lay it in the cabin it will bond to the side of the boat easier.  You can see in the picture below the layers do not stretch the entirety of the wood but it makes for a strong center.

 Below is a zoomed in shot of the overlap area on the right.  Notice the air buble/uneven surfaces.  The reason for these was the first layer of thin fiberglass I laid down. It did not lay down flat and then I laid it down and let it dry. This meant an uneven surface when laying down the heavy weight fiberglass.  The thing that I learned is you need to lay all the layers down at once in order to squeegee the air out of the fiberglass.  The strategy for eliminating these will be to grind them down with sander and then add filler over and around them

the edge of the fiberglass wowing

The second thing I did was epoxy in the forward piece into the cabin.  I laid epoxy in the bottom support first, then placed duck tape along the length of the cut line on the underside.  In this way I simply had to drop epoxy into the crack to cure.  Then wait for it to dry and remove or leave the duck tape. Though there was a little residual epoxy left on the surface I will sand it away when I repaint the floor and the forward hatch area.  I secured the surface with metal clamps, this way I made the sides meet evenly with no major dips. Dips below can be filled up, but if the center piece is too high it cannot be faired down.  After the initial lay up of epoxy, I will add another batch to bring it up to the surface level.

I will come back tomorrow and deal with these things when they are dry.