Slow Progress

Well, when I woke up this morning, I went and checked on my splices again. I think that I got a little overzealous in smoothing out my peel ply last night and starved the glass in a few spots. Luckily the epoxy was still green and I was able to fill the few voids that there were without worrying about sanding. That meant that I had to wait all day for the patches to get green before I could flip the panels and do the other side. On a plus note, the splice sits lower than a straight edge when you set it across the joint. Should make for easy fairing. In the meantime, I glued up the transom. I precoated all three layers with resin (the West rollers worked great for this), and then mixed up a 6 oz. batch of the Gel Magic glue. This stuff is a biatch to measure. The resin portion must be squeezed out of the bottle in a big tube. It's like a huge bottle of that blue gel toothpaste. If you give it a minute in the mixing cup, it will settle down and you can see how much you have. Repeat this process ad nauseum until you have the appropriate amount. Why they don't give it to you in a tub, I don't know. The hardener reeks, but at least can be poured. Mixing the two portions together is tough at first but it seems to thin as you go. When the blue and orange components are mixed together, they go clear. The stuff just has some really unusual physical properties.

Once it was mixed, I used a notched spreader to cover the first layer of ply .......... about half way. Back to the blue toothepaste to make up a 12 oz. batch. Repeat process. When the three layers were laminated together, I put a piece of MDF with 3 trolling motor batteries on it on top. The idea is to try and eliminate some of the significant warping the plywood had when it arrived. I know the epoxy needs a gap to work and you shouldn't put too much weight on it, but it damn sure has a gap with the way my transom pieces are taco'ed up. I'm currently stressing out a little based on the fact that there wasn't much glue squeeze out from the edges of the piece. The Gel Magic is pretty thick, but the transom only holds the motor on the back of the boat. Just a minor piece. There's a transom under this mess somewhere.


By this point, I was able to flip the hull pieces and put another fiberglass splice on. I couldn't afford a belt sander, so I bought a cheap grinder with 36 grit discs to cut my trenches for the tape. Good lord, will a grinder kick a piece of plywood in the face! I'm far too unskilled to be using this tool for this application, but I am told it is useful for a lot of things later in the build. Once the trenches were cut, the application went smoothly now that I have a better idea of how much resin the tape needs.


Throughout the course of the day, any extra resin left in the pot was put on the hull panels. They'll all get coated eventually anyway.

So that's where it stands now. Half of the hull panels are assembled, and the transom is glued up. Two more hull panels and the stringers and I'll be ready to set up the frames on the strongback. Later on in the build, I'll have enough room, but I'm really wishing I had more right now. I would be further along on making these panels. Thus far, my saving grace has been how much working time these epoxies allow. I ordered slow hardener for the laminating resin, and I'm glad I did. It takes longer, but makes things less stressful. The Gel Magic definitely kicks off faster, but when it's spread out on a part it's not too bad.