Canoe believe (heh, love the water humor) that I took a break from the plane to work on a boat? Okay, it really only took a half-day. First was to flake off any loose fiberglass from the last repair, meaning most of it. Next was to clean up any poky sharp bits. I used the edge of a chisel to put some deep scratches in the area where the repair cloth was going to go. The rear damage actually had a full hole into the boat. For this, I mixed up a small cup of resin thick with cabosil and then tried some chopped strands. The resulting blob was a tarball that would slowly ooze off the stirring stick. I stuffed this into the hole, taped over the hole with masking tape, and flipped the boat over to let the epoxy settle into the el-cheapo masking tape mold. Worked like a charm! I had a little run-out where the masking tape wasn't perfect, but knocking off the sharp edges with a chisel did the trick. While the epoxy was still green, we started putting on layers, bringing resin up through the cloth by putting raw epoxy down first and using squeegies to mash the cloth into the resin and ensure it was fully wetted. I forget already, but we put some 8-10 layers of 6oz tooling cloth in the damaged areas and feathered out from there. The last layer was a large piece to tie everything together and give a nice finish. It didn't need to be smooth since the rest of the bottom of the boat is scuffed up from years of use, so I left raw 6oz print.
I haven't tried one of these slide shows before, so please ping me if it fails...
Goat is slowing down until I have more space to build a wing... I'm hopeful for early summer to have a basement or at least a dedicated room. Fingers crossed ;-)
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