Composite Boatbuilding 9

Outside Hull Laminating

Since deck is fixed onto the hull firmly, now we need to move on to outside hull lamination.

First, to take the boat off from the frames easily, we removed some frames.

Then we took the boat off the frames and flipped it over onto the sawhorse and splash sitting we used for the deck.

We removed masking tapes and excess glue from the strip planked hull.

Then we removed excess glue with hand plane(Long one is better, No.5) and sanded it off with long board(40 to 60 Grain). When we were sanding, it is quite important that we feel the lump and hollow on the hull with our bare hand to make it fair.

Then Richard trimmed off the hull to the transom

We trimmed the center case and chisel out around the center case so that we could fill it with resin later.

Then, we start prep for glassing the hull.

And since we were glassing outside hulls, we need to to some counter-measure for overlap which is rebate sanding.

We also filled the gaps and holes on the hull and sanded it off again. Then, we sealed it.

We all know that there should be no sharp edge for glassing but the deck edge was still sharp. So it needs to be rounded. But the problem is that it is hard to make it rounded because it's upside down. And even when we move it onto the hull frames, these hull frames are still in the way. So we had to set up a few frames again and this time we cut the above of frames.

But by doing this, we damaged the frames which can be used again. So Chris gave us some idea on frames as below.

Then we started dry fit of glass.

We also attached glass plates for shroud on top sides. We did rebate sand around the glass plate because we would add one more layer of glass cloth on the glass plates for the shroud.

We sealed the center case hole from the bottom to the top for laminating.

Then, we started and finished the outside hull glassing

Then, we started making splash for trailers. This time we used marine class plywood for splash because it will be into the water and permanent.

First we scribed its shape and cut it out of the plywood. While we were doing this, we learned the difference between scribing and offset. If we want to do scribing, it must be plum to the subject.

Then we stacked the material for the splash and spread-ed the polyester resin.

Stack was as follows.

Plastic- Foam- Plasitc - Chop Strand (2 layers) - Core Mat - Chop Strand(2 layers).

For core mat, surface with holes must be facing the top.

The polyester resin we used is cheap but very toxic, and it's used mainly for building mass or company production plastic boat. We use MEKP(Methyl Ethyl Ketone Peroxide??) as a hardener and its ration is 1.5% of polyester resin. 

Since this MEKP could blind you and damage your skin and respiratory organ, you have to gear up with proper protection - Chemical Respirator, Safety Goggle and gloves. It is lucky that we don't need ear muff for this.

After glass part of splash is done, we fixed the plywood parts to the glass parts with glass cloth.

With auto-level, we could make it leveled and then with same length of wood, we can make it parallel.

We added wood brace onto the plywood not to be bent and this wood brace is used again later as a standing brace.

Another wood braces were attached to hold it in position.

We chopped wooden hull at the bow to the plum. Also we made a tape dam around bottom edge of the hull at the bow and then filled it with glue rather than chopping off it and replacing it with foam.

When those splash were done, we set the boat with splashes on the floor.