Fibreglassing – 1 – outside hull

I was pretty apprehensive about launching head-first into glassing the whole hull at once. But I was also very keen to get under way.

So I made a silly mistake. I decided to do a seal coat (which was a good idea), and to add 3″ tape along the keel at the same time (which was a bad idea). Later on, when it was too late, I realised the tape edge was going to create an ugly line either side of the keel, and a ridge where the top, full size cloth laid on top of it. You can see the edge of the tape in this image (taken before the full cloth was added on top):

Hull with seal coat. Note the deck hanging above - check out the colour difference in the wood!

I cannot fathom why I did this, I must have read half a dozen times not to put small layers under large! Ahh well. At least it’s on the hull.

Apart from that, fibreglassing went really well. We spent a small fortune heating the garage as much as possible, before letting the temperature start to drop to apply the resin.

Our tips (ours, because Dad was indispensible!):

• Read Rob Mack’s tips on his Laughing Loon Kayaks website.
• Read the fibre-glassing section of Vaclav Stejskal’s kayak building manual.
• Set aside a whole weekend to do the hull. I am sure it gets faster as you get better, but for us, the process of preparing, seal coat, full cloth and then multiple fill coats took all Saturday and most of Sunday morning. It was about 3-4hours between sessions in a garage around 25C.
• Heat the resin. A lamp worked really well. Made it very runny and easy to apply, although it did make the pot life pretty short (after 10 min it was harder to work).
• Have zillions of latex gloves, and a proper respirator. NZD80 for a 3M organic respirator and a longer life.
• Cheap paint brushes were great for smoothing out the cloth:

• Cling film, tightly wrapped around the bow/stern, is a very effective way of making the glass conform to the tight curve over the stems.
• We used West 105 resin and 207 hardener. 207 = expensive but better for a clear finish.
• I did try using West squeegees, which Vaclav raves about, but I found them hard to manouvre and totally inflexible. So we used dispensable West rollers. In hindsight, I would try a squeegee again, but find something more flexible. Rollers waste a *lot* of resin, and it’s hard to avoid a cloudy finish when the resin pot life is reaching its end.
• Don’t use tape (for anything). The edge is woven such that it *will* leave a raised line. I read this in a post a few days after doing the hull, and it makes total sense. I’m using hand-cut strips from plain cloth from now on.

It was enormously satisfying watching the timber appear through the glass. And despite my little error putting the tape under the cloth, it looks fantastic. In some places we really did achieve the perfect wet-out, where you can barely make out the weave of the cloth even a few inches away. There are a few patches which I can see are a little cloudy, where we overworked the resin, but for a first effort we were really pleased.

Yes, that is a big grin on my face.

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