Just a little glassing...

[Canoez]

One of my students brought his Wee Lassie II home to put on a coat of fiberglass on the outside. I went up to his house last night to help him and thought I'd post a few pictures to liven things up.

The hull shown is a "staple-less" boat and I think the fellow did a wonderful job on it. Stems and the dark parts of the feature strip are Peruvian Walnut with Poplar. The remainder of the hull is Western Red Cedar.

Because most of my students are novices, we try to keep things simple. To avoid starving the cloth for epoxy, we put on a sealer coat before they put on the cloth. It's probably one of my favorite times in the process, because you get a really good look at the color and figure in the wood and the feature strip (if it has one...) "pops". You'll note a bit of gloss on the boat here before scuffing and wiping down. Here's the "before picture:

http://i27.tinypic.com/25u5ftc.jpg

Here we are with glass draped in place before smoothing out the wrinkles:
http://i26.tinypic.com/29qd0u9.jpg

Here's his first start at wetting out the cloth. We're using squeegees and System III resin. Not bad for a beginner, really. Conditions were far from ideal - it was a bit cool in the garage where we were working and the lighting could have been much better. I made the mistake of asking if he had everything he needed and was told, yeah, sure. :rolleyes:
http://i25.tinypic.com/vec6bt.jpg

After we got the boat wet out, we went over the boat looking for runs and starved spots. We then squeegee'd the boat to remove excess resin. Excess cloth was cut from the sheer of the boat (We trim the sheer after the glass is on, BTW - I find it works well that way.) and from the stems. I don't try to wrap the cloth around the stems - I don't like the way it goes.

We cut two strips of cloth on the bias - one about 3" wide and about 30" long and another about 5" wide and 36" long. The smaller strip is applied to the stem while the resin is still wet, keeping it centered on the stem and starting at the keel and working to the sheer. Before applying the strip to stem, we pull fabric of the strip width-wise (NOT Length-wise...) and it will form nicely over the stem without having to cut darts. The second strip is applied the same way, but staggered back to avoid lapping the edges of the strips.

Here's the final result:

http://i26.tinypic.com/317gjk2.jpg

You can't see where the outer stem meets the keel too well, but it was cut at an angle so that when the stem was faired in, it has a nice looking point detail to it. I thought I got pretty good results out of a beginner, no?

[Thorne]

Very nice!

[cs]

That is indeed a very nice looking canoe. I wish my glassing skills were that good.


Chad

[Canoez]

Just takes a bit of practice, Chad. Personally, I think we did an "OK" job of glassing the hull, not a great one.

I generally like to get the epoxy from the mixing cup onto the hull quickly so that it will spread out and not cure too fast. My student was reluctant to do that and his last batch he poured from the mixing cup (about 1/3 of one side of the hull) had been in the cup for a while, started to warm up and was just beginning to kick on the hull. He didn't get a chance to go back and re-squeegee that area as much as I would have liked to, but I think it was still very good for his first time. You could still see the weave of the cloth in almost all of the hull's surface.

[cs]

My first experiance with glassing a strip canoe was the Micmac. I didn't like my job, so I ended up painting over it. The 10' Pack Canoe is the next one in the grand expirment and I hope to leave it clear.

Chad

[JimD]

A beautiful job! ...I usually put on the sealer coat a few hours before the glass, or just enough time for it to be nominally touch dry but not near a full cure. No sanding/scuffing/washing required.

[Tar Devil]

Nice! Really nice!

[Ed Strong]

This may be a dumb question but what is your sealer coat? I assume it is epoxy.

Ed

[Canoez]

Ed,

A sealer coat is just that - a sealer coat of epoxy. It serves three major purposes.

First, when you're building a strip canoe, the cedar strips still have some small gaps between the strips. As you're putting the epoxy on, the air escapes and gives you bubbles. Putting on the sealer coat helps to fill any hidden gaps.

Second (really an extension of the first note above), if you're glassing a hull as it is warming up (typically in the beginning of the day, if you're warming up the shop, or if you try to apply epoxy in the sun - applying epoxy in the sun is a really bad idea) the wood off-gasses and you get MILLIONS of tiny bubbles. You don't want the bubbles to be coming up under your fiberglass cloth and getting trapped - particularly in a clear coat job like a canoe. Because Murphy works in the boat shop, the bubbles usually appear after you think you've done a great job and left the shop to do something else, but before the epoxy has set, trapping them under the epoxy. DAMHIKT :rolleyes:

Third, it keeps the wood from sucking up all the epoxy (like a sponge) when you are trying to apply the fiberglass cloth to the hull. If you have a bare wood hull and drape cloth on it, you can apply the epoxy to the boat, but you have to hang around to make sure that wood doesn't absorb the epoxy that is in the cloth, starving it and leaving white areas that don't fill. The sealer coat just makes it easier to apply for a beginner.

Jim - it's possible to hot coat the sealer and then apply the cloth, but we like the fact that the hardened sealer coat allows the cloth to slide avoiding snags. It's also easier to smooth down when the first coat isn't tacky. I'll hot coat AFTER the cloth, but not before. (A caution here is that blush-free epoxy is still better, even for hot coating.)

[boylesboats]

OOOOOoooooo weeeeeeee... look at those in-lay strips..... very outstanding...

[Canoez]

Larry, the strips aren't inlay - they're actually that color through-and-through. (You see it sitting on the inside of the finished canoe.)

The irony here is that the student made a boo-boo as he fabricated them. We build them "double thick" (Plus kerf thickness...) so we only do one glue-up, saw them in half lenght-wise and put the cove and bead molding on them. That way we wind up with two feature strips that are exactly the same, but with half the work.

As he built up the feature strip, the ends of the contrasting "dashes" are supposed to have bevels cut on the ends pointing forward and back. He turned the cuts 90° from where they should have been - they only show if you could look down on the feature strip from the edge!

[boylesboats]

Larry, the strips aren't inlay - they're actually that color through-and-through. (You see it sitting on the inside of the finished canoe.)

The irony here is that the student made a boo-boo as he fabricated them. We build them "double thick" (Plus kerf thickness...) so we only do one glue-up, saw them in half lenght-wise and put the cove and bead molding on them. That way we wind up with two feature strips that are exactly the same, but with half the work.

As he built up the feature strip, the ends of the contrasting "dashes" are supposed to have bevels cut on the ends pointing forward and back. He turned the cuts 90° from where they should have been - they only show if you could look down on the feature strip from the edge!

Thanks, that is a great information Canoez... If I get settled down some day, I would like to do a stripper..

[switters]

That looks good, especially compared to my first try at the cloth. I taped the chine logs on a one sheet skiff this weekend just to try it out and found out that I do not move as fast as I should have been, even on an 8' boat. Runs off of the sqeegee got on the sides and some were missed, not a complete disaster but glad I did it on the practice boat. I need to get some pictures posted and then you can show the apprentices why a mentor is so important. I could not get the 0.5-inch part of the tape to lay down so it is sticking up all around the bottom of the skiff and needs to be trimmed off, and its dry. That should be fun.

[Canoez]

Switters - can you post some pictures, please? I'd like to see them.

Is it a tack-and-tape boat?

I've tried to do use "prepared" fiberglass tape off the roll, but I've found I can't make it conform because of the bound edges. I have much better luck using bias cut strips from out of the cloth itself.

[switters]

I have some pictures that I will try to post. I need to set up an account somewhere first. Agreed that the tape has limited uses. I did not put down a sealer coat and yes, starved the cloth. Lesson learned. One thing I did do that turned out well was using plastic spoons for the fillets and then cleaning up with a squeegee on both sides. I had so much fun and learned enough that Sunday I cut out the parts for another One sheet skiff for my GF who has been helping and wants her own. It is nice to start on a project while I can still remember what I would like to do different than the first.

Oh, the boat is with chine logs, I cannot imagine getting the bends necessary with a tack and tape. The fiberglass was unnecessary for the oss but I wanted the practice. I did the seams inside the boat with fillets and filler for the same reason.