Still on fibreglass

The materials for the heads sole arrived last Friday, usual good service from East Coast Fibreglass Supplies, so this week I was able to crack on with stiffening up the sole. I started by giving the existing sole a good sanding with a random orbital sander and some 50 grit discs followed by a good clean up. once this was complete I cut out the three layers of 450g biaxial glass cloth so that everything was ready for me to start straight away on the job on Wednesday morning. I started on Wednesday morning by cleaning down with acetone before laying up the three layers of glass cloth on the sole and then left it to cure.

After glassing over the sole

The first task today was to trim round the bilge access opening with an oscillating multi tool, I have a Bosch cordless and is one of the most useful power tools that I have should have bought one years ago.

After trimming the opening

I had some problems getting the biaxial cloth to form itself into the access opening as there is a tight double bend which forms the recess for the access cover as well as the corners of the opening and on inspection it would appear that the top lamination had lifted leaving a void along the right hand end of the opening, unfortunately it does not show up in the photograph. I think maybe that 450g cloth was a bit on the heavy side and that I would have been better going for perhaps four layers of 300g cloth however the rest seemed to be OK. To rectify the situation I cut off the bubble, which was only one layer, with the multi tool, before building up the recess with a strip of biaxial cloth and some more resin. The whole area will require a good sanding and some fairing compound before gelcoating, as a job like this is basically working in reverse, the normal method of fibreglass construction is to start out with a polished mould into which goes the gelcoat followed by the fibreglass. Trying to lay fibreglass that is level enough to take the gelcoat is a lot more difficult especially as I am not an expert. Next week the aim is to get the sanding and fairing done and the gelcoat applied the plan is to use two coats of gelcoat with a coat of flocoat over it topreclude the air and allow it all to cure.