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This blog chronicles Mihai's adventures in building and sailing boats.

Monday, June 6, 2011

Skerry build day 13: bow and stern fillets


Today I had a chance to play with fiberglass. After flipping the boat over I put in thickened epoxy fillets in the bow and the stern and overlaid them with fiberglass tape. The process worked quite well despite my original fears that the tape will bunch up. The weave is loose enough that once you've wetted the tape with epoxy you can stretch it out smoothly along the boat.

One of the fillets had about 30-45 minutes to 'dry out' and was a lot easier to work with than the second which was still a bit too soft. I'd strongly recommend waiting about 1 hour between making the fillets and laying out the tape. You can use up most of that hour using the leftover 'peanut butter epoxy' from the fillets to glue the frames and patch up any wire holes throughout the boat. I was a bit concerned that the peanut butter epoxy will not hold the frames well enough (the manual recommends 'mustard' epoxy instead). My fears were unfounded - the frames didn't pop out once I removed the wires. I think the mustard epoxy would be easier to shove under the frames (especially in the middle) however I was able to squeeze the peanut butter under as well, though it probably was a bit more work.




Time: 2 hours
Total: 45 hours

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