Sailing With Alliance

This morning I went out to the farm and was able to put the first layer of fiberglass down on the side deck.

Here is where we left off:

Today I took a close up of the bevel to show the cut line and how the fiberglass gently slopes upwards to the gel coat:

I began by cutting the fiberglass to the exact size I needed to fill in the bevel:

Once I had everything cut to size I carefully laid each strip to the side in the opposite order that I would need them.  I then mixed up two batches of epoxy – 1 thickened with 404 high density and one un-thickened.  I wet out the surface of the exposed fiberglass on the deck, then put the thickened epoxy down and spread it around with a brush.  Next I placed the fiberglass down and worked it into the epoxy with a metal roller to make sure it was totally wet out.  I then wet out the exposed fiberglass with un-thickened epoxy and used the roller again to make sure all the fibers were laid down well.

And here is the finished product with a preview of my cramped work space:

It doesn’t look much different than where we started from but it is now 100% watertight and a great deal stronger!! I’ll sand all this down and apply the smaller layers that build up the recess in a second sitting.  For the upcoming small strips of fiberglass I will use 406 to thicken the epoxy before finally fairing everything with 407.