Still only using the crappy phone camera, so not much point doing my standard “embed the thumbnail and link to the big picture” when the full sized picture is so small.
Today I draped the fibreglass cloth over the kayak and then “painted” it with vast quantities of epoxy to stick it down. The instructions say
Mix up 6 oz of epoxy. Mix it thoroughly and pour it into a paint tray. Now roll out a layer of epoxy over the cloth….Once your first six ounces has been applied to the boat, move the roller over the surface to fully wet out the cloth and adhere it to the hull. Now squeegee the excess resin into a cup.
I’m not sure if I was over zealous about the squeegeeing or what, but I ended up with a textured coat instead of a smooth coat. I was expecting smooth. When I built my canoe 25 years ago, the instructions basically gave you the choice of which you wanted – the smooth one looks better, but the textured one gives you a lighter boat, and the texture might serve to break up the boundary layer and make it a bit faster. Basically after applying the 6 oz of epoxy and smoothing it out, this white foam would come out of it, and I had to squeegee it out. I’d do another batch of 6 oz, and then have to go back and squeegee all the previous batches. I didn’t really see any end to the foam from the first batches until the the boat was half done.
The cup I was squeegeeing the foam into got about half full and was getting quite hot in my hand, so I switched to another cup. But I went back to the first cup after I was done and discovered that the foam had boiled up over the top of the cup and solidified. This picture actually shows the foam freed up out of the cup, but still holding the cup shape.
This evening, when the epoxy is “green”, I’m supposed to trim the overhanging fibreglass. And tomorrow I need to put a strip of fibreglass “tape” along the keel line for reinforcement.
Dammit, I just realized I missed my chance to put the boat registration number under the fibreglass. Oh well.
Pic 1: oh, that’s a *paint roller*! For a minute I thought you had a Dalek infestation.
Yeah, yeah, “paint roller”. That’s it. I’m definitely *not* being threatened. Nothing to see here. Move along.