butterfly joints

Today I glassed the butterfly joints that join the first 12” of the side to the bottom panel. This seam is what allows the boat when unfolded to retain that nice, smooth bow section that one doesn’t usually see on home-built boats. The thing I found tricky about this job was that it is necessary to glass both sides of the panels at the same time. If you try to glass just one side and then flip the panels to glass the other side, there is not enough strength in the seam and it will most likely crack. So I had to figure out a way to glass the underside of the seam. What I came up with was wetting out the glass tape on a piece of plastic coated freezer paper several inches larger than the seam. I made sure to get plenty of extra epoxy on the glass and also generously wetted out the under side of the panels. Then I just slid the freezer paper with wetted glass under the panels and lowered them unto the glass. Then I just glassed the upper half of the seam as normal, covered it with more freezer paper and added some weight to press it all together, hoping I didn’t get any unexpected folds in the bottom glass layer.

After it has cured overnight, all looks okay.