Back To The Deck

Glassing the bottom of the deck went fairly routinely-I used the dookie-fill technique again, made the usual mess, and had an average number of drips come through to the other side.
I tried the fit of the deck on the hull and was astounded-it almost fit! The difference was only no more than 1/4" at worst. Still, I used spreader sticks to widen the hull a little.

I spot-glued with thickened epoxy, since there are some minor gaps. When the tape is removed, I'll do the whole joint with dookie.
I usually tack a 2" strip of 4 oz. glass to the inside of the joint before tacking the deck on, and saturate the glass later. The main problem with that technique is that it seems to take an enormous quantity of epoxy to saturate the glass down the length of the strip, and then it always wants to form a puddle in the middle. This time, I saturated 2 strips of 9 oz. tape, about 8" long, and applied them to the joints. It looked a very long way to the ends of the boat from the cockpit opening. I can do shorter strips in the bow & stern after the hatches are cut, if I want.

The deck glassed, with my friend The Osprey. I must have improved at fiberglassing, because this seemed faster & easier than ever.

I disassembled the box beam, and made two sawhorses, once again putting my Thule racks into service. The box beam had a tendency to disassemble  itself, since its very heavy, and only nailed together with 4 d nails.

Sanding. It always seems like there is a very thick coating of epoxy everywhere, but I always manage to hit the fiberglass a few times. Figured something out: the 'blotchy" areas are where I'm sanding through multiple coatings of epoxy. They seem to wet out o.k. under varnish, however.
No matter what tools or techniques I use, sanding is still a tedious, messy job! ;)