Update:
Back to the boat. After vacuuming out the debris I did a quick
grind of the inner hull and the front deck with my Dremel. Another
vacuum job and a wipe with acetone and I was ready to start with
the duraglass. A very thick first coat allowed me to use a stir
stick to force the material to the bottom of the crevice. Back
to the mix and spread ordeal. After the first coat dried I sanded
it down and whiped with acetone for a second coat. Again I sanded
it down, this time making it as level as possible. I then used
finishing bondo to feather out the last bit and to fill in the
small voids. By this time it was starting to get dark so the final
sanding will have to wait. I cleaned up the area and took a much
needed shower.
This duraglass/bondo ordeal has given me a new respect for car
repair men. (Not enough that I won’t still complain of the
prices:P) It is a pretty tedious, and sometimes painful, process.
It seemed that no matter how much care I used in laying the material,
the sanding resulted in voids that had to be refilled. Hopefully
the finish bondo will take care of that.
The next week it stormed pretty hard so on Saturday the morning
was spent cleaning up all the debris in the yard and on the boat.
Since the rear of the boat sat at the end of my carport it had
about six inches of water in the rear compartment. Remember last
time I had to syphon the water out from section to section? Well
this time I went to Sears and bought one of the larger wet-dry
vacs and made short work of it.
Saturday afternoon was spent detailing the little water runoff
area of the cockpit. I caulked the edges with colored 5200 and
let it set. Once set I completely filled in the area with duraglass
and let it cure over night. An importqant note that I have kind
of skimmed over....Between every step I acetone the area to be
worked on. This seems like a waste (And uses ALOT of acetone)
but ensuring a clean bonding surface and is an absolute necessity.
Sunday morning I detail sanded the entire front deck. The areas
where the caulk came out pretty nice and the rounded edges at
the bulkhead looked almost professional. Next I whiped down the
front deck with acetone twice in order to get it ready for glassing.
Once dried I layed out rows of 1.5 ounce mat in a front-to-back
pattern overlapping all sides of the front deck. Then I rolled
out biaxle in rows side-to-side, again overlapping all sides.
Giving it a good twice over I attempted to fit everything the
best I could before preparing for wetting it all out.
I poured four 62 ounce buckets full of resin and filled four
small container of MEK at a little under a 1:1 ratio. I wanted
to have these ready to mix as I worked my way up and down the
front deck. I also laid out mixing sticks, gloves, a couple rags,
my roller, and a bucket of acetone.
Pulling back the biaxle on the left rear, I started wetting out
the mat. Once the mat was good and wet for about four feet, the
biaxle was flopped back over the still liquid resin and rolled
and wetted out as well. Then I pulled back the next portion of
biaxle and wet out the front part of the mat. When it was done
I flopped the biaxle back over it and rolled it out.
Starting from the left rear I worked my way forward, to the right
and then back toward the cockpit. Unfortunately while I was doing
the final four feet it started to rain. OUT OF A CLEAR SKY!!!!!
GRRR
Now take a 24 foot boat and put it under a 22 foot carport and
you get about 2 foot of wet fiberglass. Since I had already wet
out the mat I had no choice but to continue on or risk redoing
the entire right side of the front deck. I hurried as fast as
I could, but fiberglassing is a time consuming process if you
want it done right. By the time I was done, the right front portion
of the boat was a white milky mess. I used a tarp to stop anymore
rain but the damage had been done.
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