Building the Wine Glass Wherry Part III: Oars are just different paddles

I've received a couple of questions about my new "high and tight" hairdoo. Well, here's the deal with that. In short, if you play in the sun your whole life eventually you'll pay the price. I'm paying the price with trips to the dermatologist for mole checks and a type of medieval torture that they like to call suspicious skin area removal. Turns out I have a mole on the top of my head that's highly suspect and that suckers coming off... along with a big patch of my hair. So I figured I'd preempt the hospital shave with a cut of my own. Thus the 'doo. Lesson: Wear sunscreen. But that's not the whole story.

Check out what happens when you're not paying attention, go to trim up your buzz cut and find out that the attachment fell off of the shaver. Nothing left to do at that point except go to the nearest barber and have them cut it to code. Thus my high and tight hairdoo, satisfied?

Back to the boat. Time for the reinforcement of the bottom of the boat. I'm taping off the chine that I'm going to cut my fiberglass back to. I decided that the edge of the glass will hide nicely in the natural line of the chine- so here I'm making sure that I'll have a nice clean finished edge.

Cutting the glass back so that it just hangs over the blue tape. I'll let the resin harden a bit (but not completely) and then come in with a razor blade and carefully cut it off at the tape. If I do it right, I shouldn't have to do too much sanding to feather in the edge of the cloth.

Here's a batch of mixed up epoxy being poured onto the fiberglass. I'll pour it all out and then get to work with my squeegee pulling it from the center to the edges of the glass. I'm always amazed at how the glass goes nice and clear once the resin get's soaked in.

The resin has a working time of about twenty minutes (at the temperature I was working at- I always started glassing after the hottest part of the day) before it starts to get really thick and gooey. What's happening is that the hardener is going to work cross connecting all the polymers in the epoxy- in general terms, it's starting to "go off". So you can't waste time, you've got to keep that stuff moving and cover ground. If not, you'll be wasting a lot of expensive epoxy.

And here's the finished reinforcement patch. The patch gives the dory three full layers on the bottom (flat surface) and five layers over the bow. I'll wait for the epoxy in the glass that's touching the blue tape to get to the "green" stage where it's still flexible and then come along and cut the glass with a sharp new razor blade. Next, I'll pull the tape off the hull and the glass will be cut at a nice sharp line. This saves you tons of sanding. Be sure to use a brand new razor blade and if you see that a couple of fibers haven't been cut through.... STOP and cut them before you continue pulling the tape off. If you don't you're going to have a mess on your hands.

Here's the hull with the reinforcement patch and an additional coat of epoxy painted over the hull to fill the weave of the laminated fiberglass. This is called the fill coat. Also, I've laminated the transom and am waiting to cut the edges of the fiberglass with a razor blade. It looks like I may need to paint another fill coat on- one coat just wasn't enough to fill the weave of the 'glass.

And this is where I'm at presently. Next step is to flip the hull, pull the temporary braces and saturate the inside of the hull. I'll keep you posted. Here's some extra pics to check out: 

Here's the stuff I use. And yes the box of empty Pacifico Ballenas that I'll use on my next trip down to Cabo San Lucas. Bring your own box and skip the deposito.... genius. 

And every now and then, I'd stop for a stand-o session. Do a little work, surf a little, sip a coldy. Pretty ideal. Here's Kelly Kraus coming off the bottom

More boat stuff to come!