Today the glass tape under the deck was dry, so I took the deck off the hull again. I cut two 9×23 pieces of fibreglas cloth. (The instructions said to use scrap cloth, but since the previous time I was using cloth it didn’t mention keeping the scraps, so I had to use “good” cloth.) These were used to reinforce the deck recess area behind the cockpit.
After that was done, I spread a saturation coat of epoxy over the entire deck. I love doing these, because the wood looks so beautiful once it’s soaked in epoxy. I use a roller to apply this epoxy, and that makes it go very fast, but it seems incredibly wasteful because almost the entire first 4 ounces of epoxy you mix up seems to go to saturating the roller, and you get a lot more coverage from the second 4 ounces. Plus there is no easy way to clean the rollers, so you throw it out after doing a single coat. After you roller it on, you go over the whole thing with a paint brush a couple of times to smooth it out and take out the bubbles that come up. You’ll also notice the deck has a bit of a twist to it – that should disappear when it’s glued to the hull.
After that coat had dried, I trimmed the fibreglas from the cockpit reinforcement, and rollered on a second coat. It looks pretty much the same as in this picture, so I didn’t take another. Once again, a couple of passes with the paint brush were necessary to smooth it and take out the bubbles.
I also took out the temporary forms from the hull in preparation for doing the inside of the hull. That’s going to take a lot of prep, and I’m still trying to figure out when to do the hatch kit.