Always seems to take me awhile to get into a new project. I delayed and worried about my first use of the epoxy and fiberglass cloth. One of the reasons was the failure of a couple of very small batches of epoxy. I think now that the proportions were wrong. I dreaded finding out that the epoxy stayed runny on a whole section of fiberglass! How would I fix that?
The store which sold me the fiberglass supplies advised buying a rotary cutter for the cloth, saying the edges would not fray near as bad as using scissors. Expensive, but I bought the cutter and mat.
A discussion on Duckworks led me to worry about the fiberglass cloth adhering to the sharp corners of the hulls. I know the cloth will appear at first to lie nice and flat, but before the epoxy can set up, the stiffness of the cloth lifts it away from the wood on either side of the joint, causing bubbles to form underneath. I guessed that I would need some kind of gentle pressure to hold the cloth in place until the epoxy cured. I decided to cover the affected areas with 6mil poly then place miniature sandbags on top.
In the attatched picture, I have joined, end to end, two sheets of quarter-inch plywwod. The ends are joined with epoxy-embedded 6oz fiberglass cloth. The joint was covered in poly and little sandbags just to see how they would work. I am relieved to see the epoxy set up rock-hard and where the poly covered the epoxy, the joint is glassy smooth.
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