| You can see that we have masked off the area to be fiberglassed, precut and rolled up the fiberglass and I am painting a coat of epoxy on the wood. I was taught that you should put a good coat of epoxy down first, then roll the glass on and wet it from the top. |
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| Rolled out fiberglass |
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| Wetted out fiberglass being trimmed |
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| Using a flat stick to hold the fiberglass in place, the fiberglass is trimmed with a sharp razor. It takes to people, but a very nice job can be done. |
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| Nice job. |
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| The fiberglass for the stern is laid out with some generous margins, then gently rolled back to keep the front edge from fraying. |
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| If you look carefully, you can see that the fillets have been done. You then very carefully and lightly brush on your epoxy, roll on your fiberglass, gently wet out the glass and trim as before. |
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| Leave the glass hanging over the stern until it hardens, then it will trim very nicely with a sharp box knife. |
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| If you have access to Dacron fabric, it can save you a lot of work when you are fiberglassing. The epoxy does not adhere to it and after the epoxy hardens, you can peel it right off, leaving a relatively smooth surface that fills the weave and needs very little sanding. You have to have sufficient epoxy and smooth out any bubbles, or you might create more work. I used small pieces on the bow, overlapped, and it worked very nicely. |
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| I used and air tool with a medium grit disc to feather the edges. If I had thought to use Dacron, that would have made a nice transition. |
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| We then laid out our tapes so that we could finish the fillets. You can see the fillets under the glass on the stern, so we didn’t have to do them. |
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| Close up of fillet. |
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| Final sanding of the whole bottom. |
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| After the first coat of un-thickened epoxy over the whole bottom. |
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