I’m starting to feel quite comfortable at glassing – at least concerning shortboard freelaps – it’s certainly a world of difference from the first couple of boards. I’m shooting a quart of resin with 15 cc’s at 19C (66F) – giving me about 15 minutes to get everything in place and a few more to catch any trouble spots… which is perfect timing for me on the shorties. A far cry from lightning fast, but it sure is a lot quicker then when I started glassing…
All things considered I’m happy with my progress, but what bothers me is that I’m still getting some dry spots… no more big areas, just those little spots that don’t fully saturate. I know it’s cosmetic, but annoying. I’ve made a lot of progress on them on my last few tries, to the point where you can’t really tell on a white board unless you really look… but yesterday’s had a deck fade on it which really makes them stick out more. This problem is certainly more frequent on the deck – two layers.
My basic technique is to dump about a third of my bucket on the center and quickly, and lightly, move it around, saturating everything up to the rails. I then let that soak in while I wet out all the rails. Next I come back to the deck (bottom) and rub the resin in with a firm stroke from the center out to nose/tail then rails (thanks PlusOne). You can hear the stroke. Then I wrap my rails. Finally I take what’s left in my bucket and smear a thin layer across the deck (you can still see the weave texture, just making sure I don’t leave those big ‘dry-er’ areas) and scout out any trouble spots.
It wouldn’t concern me, except that I feel I’m developing a good “flow”, I can move from step to step without thinking, things are feeling natural - I want to weed out problems now, before I fall into a habit. I have no idea how you guys are doing this in 8-10 minutes, I really feel now like I’m hardly missing a beat – with the exception of wrapping the laps, I’m sure I could cut a minute or two out of that.
Thanks for the help, past and present… sorry for the short novel.