Let the Fiberglassing Begin!

Well today I lost my fiberglass virginity.  I consulted with a local boat builder/supplier and went with vinyl ester resin.   I made too big a batch on my first wet out and it cooked with about half left.  Oh well trial by fire!

As suggested, I cut out all of the pieces first and numbered them accordingly.  This is the 1.5 oz. mat fiberglass

I used 1.5 oz mat and then 7 oz. cloth.  Left out the area that will be cut out for the window.  Why waste material?

Overlapped the joints between the port and forward walls.

I will add 3" fiberglass tape at all joints for extra strength.

That was a full days work.

Lessons I learned:

A roller works better than a brush on vertical surfaces.

Need to go to Harbor Freight and pick up some cheaper sponge rollers.  Home Depot is only a half a block away so I splurged!

When working alone, wet out the plywood first, then attach the mat.  You don't have time to place both mat and cloth with one layup.  I had to mix two batches for just about every strip area.

Let the residual resin cook and harden in the plastic container and pop it out so you can reused the container.

Latex/Nitryl gloves are worth their weight in gold.  Buy the 100 pack and change them often!

This is not rocket science, but I can see there are tricks to make this go smoother.