Fibreglass on Bottom Panels

With the decks in place there was no longer any excuse for not starting the fibreglass covering on the outside of the boat. After a final sanding and a thorough vacuuming and a wipe over with a cloth dampened with acetone and several deep breaths I began.

I mixed batches of epoxy as I went along using Boat Cote resin and the "tropical" hardener to gain a longer working time. The epoxy was poured into a paint tray and rolled onto the boat with a 75 mm roller. Draping the cloth over the boat was difficult because it sticks as soon as it touches and pulling it up to rearrange it tend to stretch it out of shape. However, I managed to get it on. I rolled it with a serrated roller to get the air bubbles out and rolled more epoxy on to make sure the glass cloth was saturated. It's a tricky process needing just enough epoxy to saturate the cloth because any excess will tend to run or sag.

That's what it looked like after I had finished. Pretty good I thought as I closed the shed and left it to dry out but while the epoxy is wet and shiny it is hard to see the runs!

Even on this small boat I learned several things about laying fibreglass cloth. Not in any sort of order:
You need good scissors to cut the cloth cleanly.
It would be a good idea to cut the cloth to shape before starting with the epoxy.
You need scalpels or razor blades to cut the cloth in places where it refuses to lie flat, eg on curving corners. The cloth stretches within limits but I needed to make cuts so it could overlap in a few places.
Cutting the wet cloth with scissors is the end of the scissors, I could not clean them. Fortunately I discovered this on cheap scissors!
You need at least one helper because you are working against the clock. A helper can keep up the supply of epoxy to avoid pauses on the application. A helper can help with the rolling on of the epoxy, a priming coat which will soak in pretty quickly and a second coat so the surface is wet. Two people can more easily position the cloth, roll it out and roll on more epoxy to fill the cloth.
The foam rollers can't be cleaned - I put one in acetone to reuse on the next stage but the acetone destroyed to plastic tube.