Ready for Glassing

After patching voids, sanding, and reading this great article on How to Make a Transparent Glass Lay-up, I coated the hull exterior with epoxy using a roller to get ready for laminating on fiberglass. The article (from Laughing Loon) recommends heating your shop up before applying the resin, then letting it gradually cool while the resin cures. Allegedly this reverses the off-gassing that occurs when you heat up wood, and draws the resin down into the wood's pores. I got my shop heated up to 71 degrees, applied the resin, then opened doors. Last I checked it was 69 degrees. We'll see what happens. Here's the hull coated with resin:



I spent quite a bit of time sanding the now-filled screw head voids, and the outer corners. First I used my good old Makita finish palm sander, but then I bought a DeWalt variable speed random orbital sander. Hand sanded with a block of wood with 100 grit sandpaper on the outer corners, then with a foam sanding pad for the final radiusing of the corners. It looks pretty good to me.


The plywood seams are very smooth. If you run you hand over them with your eyes closed you can't tell where they are.


My new random orbital sander. It seems highly useful. As recommended in the article above, I attached my shop vac to it. Very little dust that way.


The rubber pad on the bottom of my Makita sander was toast, and I didn't have a vacuum attachment for it. I priced both on the internet (about $25 total with shipping), then decided to make a new pad from some medium density closed cell foam I had lying around, and made a vacuum attachment from an extra shop vac part. Whenever I'm in a thrift store I usually search for vacuum attachments.