Page 14 - Shaping Rub Strips, Fiberglassing the Outside of the Hull

After smoothing out the rub strips, there was one more step required before I could glasss the hull.  I had to insert a piece of ash into the ends of the deck which would dress up the ends of the top strips, and also flow into the rub strips on the hull.  The curve was too severe for laminated, heat-bent strips, so I opted to carve the pieces out of solid ash.  Here's a picture of the bow top piece.
I put a "V" into the end of the top strips, thinking it would look decorative.  It does, but it made the job of carving much tougher.  On the stern I decided to just square off the cut.

Here's a picture of the stern top piece.

After the glue (epoxy with Cabosil thickener) set, I used a combination of planes, the belt sander, random orbital sander, a sharp whittling knive, and hand sanding to shape the piece to match the rub strips.  I don't have a picture of that here, but I'll put some in on another page.

Finally, it was time to put some fiberglass on Aileen's boat!

Here's a picture of the hull inverted, with the glass draped over it.

I used clips to hold the cloth in place and keep it from slipping off onto the floor.  The clips had to be removed as I approached them with epoxy.  The glass needs to be free to move with the brush as the epoxy is applied, to get a nice smooth surface.  (This picture also shows the deck in the background, awaiting its turn.)

Here's the side view, with the cloth neatly trimmed and clipped.

Here's the initial wetting out.  (Why, that's me!)

As you can see, I always use a respirator when working with epoxy.  Even though it's odorless, I don't think breathing fumes would be a good idea.  I also always wear latex gloves, because contacting the epoxy with your skin is not supposed to be a good idea either.  You can also see, perhaps, the Tyvek sleeves I wear.  I've ruined some long sleeve shirts by getting the sleeves into the epoxy somehow, and if wearing short sleeves, I always seem to get dabs of epoxy on my arms.  Once again, not good.  By the way, plain white vinegar is an excellent cleaning agent for epoxy.

You apply the epoxy by pouring it onto the glass and "squeegee-ing" it around.  It takes awhile for the epoxy to fully penetrate the cloth, so you have to keep pulling the epoxy around and lightly pushing it into the weave of the cloth.  When the cloth becomes invisible, it's good and wet.  Of course, too much epoxy isn't good - it adds useless weight, and doesn't look good - so you also have to squeegee away excess epoxy, once the glass is saturated.

You can see the beauty of the redwood starting to appear!  Yahoo!

Here's the bow, fully wet, showing the shaped ash rub strip.  Sorry I don't have a picture which shows it coming to a point at the bow.

Here's the stern view.

Here's the top view.  My, doesn't it look shiny red!