Interior Glassing Preparations

Even with the constant threat of bad weather last week, I was still able to get the canoe pretty well ready to receive the interior lamination of fiber glass. First I completely sanded and cleaned up the epoxied interior. The stern fillet needed a bit of a re-work because of the runny mix used initially, so I mixed up another small batch and got it all sorted out. It's still not very pretty but at least it should be OK for the glass.





Then I set up my new roll of Bi-Axial cloth and started measuring out the lengths needed. With the traumatic memories of my earlier experiences in glassing the exterior still fresh in my mind, I have instead decided to apply the glass in strips cross-wise this time. This should mean that I'll only have to deal with a small area at a time, and ought to have lots less trouble getting the bloody cloth to behave itself. I started amidships and worked toward the ends (the widths seems to fit just right). There will be a slight overlap between each strip, but I'm hoping this will add to the transverse strength. Once these strips were all cut out, I stacked them neatly on my bench and covered them over.








I'm a bit concerned about the much heavier cloth (over 400gm - twice what was used on the exterior), specifically whether or not I'll be able to wet it out enough. So I cleaned up one of the earlier test panels (the really bowed one) and did a trial run on it. I also used some peel ply, since I'm planning to have a go at using that as well in the proper lay-up. It seemed to go well, hope it turns out OK.





I'm hoping that I get a good break in the weather tomorrow (predicting rain again). Man, what I'd give to have a decent shed to work in. It'd be so cool to get past all this fiber glassing crap, and finally get onto some fun stuff (gunwales, bulkheads, etc).