It is quite a while since I posted. All the pictures up to the gas bottle were taken in October. Since then life just got in the way – Putting my boat away for the winter, Holiday in Italy, Holiday in Holland, Christmas, New Year. It is tough being retired!
Let’s get on with the story. The next stage is to sheath the hull, to protect the strip planking and add strength with two layers of fibreglass.
Above, you will see my fibreglass cloth, cutting implements and roller all ready for action. Below, you can see me arranging the cloth with my home built hanging rail. (If you are planning to do this, don’t bother with the hanging rail. There are much easier ways, which I will try to remember to show in a later post.)
Below is my first “drop” of cloth. It is a bit like hanging wall paper. I am using the “wet” method. I roller resin on to the hull surface, then lay the cloth on top and spread – squeegee the fabric so that the resin is pushed through the cloth and there isn’t air or excess resin left underneath.
The next drop of cloth is positioned with a bit of overlap. A sharp blade used to cut through the overlapping layers and the excess cloth pulled away leaving a clean but joint.
Below marks the progress made prior to my winter shut down.
I got back to the boat shed in the second week of January to find all in good order. My wonderful shed had kept the winter storms from getting to the boat. Of course it was very cold in the shed and since my resin needs at the very least 15 deg to work, I fired up the space heater to warm up the shed. Ten minutes later, the gas ran out. Progress halted for another day.
Gas bottle refilled, work has restarted and below shows the result of another four drops of fibreglass cloth.
