Glassing the bottom

So a spring full of sailing has slowed the progress on the boat. Once we flipped the hull, it mostly sat there few a few weeks while I took full advantage of an unusually windy beginning to the summer. I crew on a J29, J24, and a Vanguard 15, and this May brought multiple regattas including the National J24 championships, which was a great time. But now the full heat has returned and the winds are starting to moderate, so I am, bit by bit, getting back to working on the boat.

A few weeks ago, a few friends came by to help glass the bottom. It went pretty smoothly. The only minor issue was that the epoxy was ready to kick off pretty quickly even though I'm using the "very slow" hardener. Next time I need to work with large amounts of epoxy in this kind of heat, I will first chill the jugs of epoxy for a few hours in an ice bath. That should slow things down enough to make the process a bit less frantic.

Anyway, here are a few pics of the process under way. It looks a bit haphazard at this point cause we were in such a rush to get the epoxy into the weave of the glass before it kicked.


The glass fabric was just wide enough to span the bottom and wrap the chine about 2 inches at the point of widest beam. So at the transom and bow there was plenty of extra fabric. I just cut the excess off and will fair the edge of the glass into the sides.



There was no way the folds of the fabric at the transom corner were going to behave. Instead of trying to cut and fold things neatly together, I just left them alone and ground off the loose fabric once the epoxy cured. The corners already have three layers of glass tape inside and out, so any more is not really necessary.


The biggest challenge was getting the epoxy to fully saturate the cloth without allowing too much excess that would pool up under the glass and allow it to float up off the wood. This took some practice with the right amount of pressure with rubber squeegees to get it just right.


Once we got the technique dialed-in, the result was a well saturated glass that still had some of the weave of the fabric showing on the surface.

Right now I'm starting the process of fairing, which is a long, nasty project. I'll try to get some pics of that up soon.