Back to fibreglass

After some thought I have decided to bring the heads sole repair level with the remainder of the upstand and then to stiffen up the sole, which is a little bit on the bendy side, with two or three layers of 450g biaxial cloth and resin then gelcoat over the whole lot on completion. I  started this week by laying up more CSM on the repair until I ran out of resin, once the resin had cured I sanded out the high spots leaving some low areas which are shallow enough that I can fill them with fairing compound made up with polyester resin and glass beads. The materials for the completion of the job arrived today so that I should be able to press on with this task next week.

After sanding the repair

The gelcoat on the sole is not in good condition there is some cracking which I think is more than likely down to impact damage it is also discoloured and even after sanding does not look very good so re gelcoating is going to be the best option. This has been a bit of a short post as a lot of time was taken cleaning up after sanding the new fibreglass although my orbital sander has a dust collection bag it still seems to spread dust everywhere, probably a better bet would be a connection to a vacuum cleaner.

Also this week I have been experimenting with wood dye in an attempt to match the merenti, that I am using for the door frames, with the remainder of the internal trim, that which I used for the cabinet door trim did not turn out to be a particularly good match so this time I have tried Colron deep mahogany which after several coats of varnish has turned out to be a much better match.

Test piece against the compression post trim

The odd patches are a result of the reflection of the camera flash in the varnish