Just an account of my glassing last night that bought me back down to earth. Similar stories, advice or full on mick-taking is very welcome.
My first ever glass job set the tone for the future, gel before even half the top was wet out. Went with the split second decision to rip it all off, have a beer and try again tomorrow. They keep getting better and better, my last board gave me hope, no problems at all apart from a glass rip out round the fin plug while sanding. It actually looked good, nothing could bring me down now.
So I’m shaping a 6’1 x 21 x 2 3/8 round nose egg kinda thing, single fin, modelled a bit on the canvas mini noserider 512. Last night i went to lam the bottom, single 6oz with a turquoise tint, big triangle fin patch and cut laps. Mixed my resin about 1 litre with 8cc’s of catty (catalyst dispenser, I think this is in CC’s?, i’ve only just thought about this, why are these in cc when we never measure resin in this amount, maybe this is where i’ve gone wrong) this is a pretty standard amount for me, but this is the first board i’ve shaped over 5’5. It was cold, UK at 9pm in a warehouse, added an extra cc of catalyst just to be sure, I’m always worried about being left with a sticky lam, i guess flashing in the sun would sort this anyway?
So here we go, 6oz seems a lot harder to wet out than 4oz, especially the good quality stuff, had a lot of air bubbles to work out. By the time these were gone i just started flooding the laps when I noticed gelling. Cue 10 solid minutes of solid cursing and the fastest squeegee work in the west. Somehow got them all wet out and stuck down clean as a whistle, trouble was the flats cured way faster than the rest, so im left with uneven patches and colour where I haven’t removed excess resin. To try and get the thickness slightly better i gently moved around bits, big mistake, this has now left bumps in resin where it didn’t lay flat again. Any ideas on sorting this, sanding out as good as possible and double hot coat to smooth it all out?
This had a deep dish single concave, noticed when pulling the squeege full length of the board, where the concave ends and meets flat at the rail i’ve managed to scratch the foam by pressing with the squeegee on this high point. Should’ve gone stringer to rail.
The extra fun part was waiting to flip the board for the cut laps, where I hadn’t managed to take most of the excess off the flats, these extra thick parts didn’t want to dry and I didn’t want it sticking to the racks. I fell asleep next to the radiator waiting, 2 hours later it was still tacky to which I said f it and flipped it anyway. Cut lap was actually quite interesting, I heard of the zipper technique but when I went to try it cutting from the deck side just seemed wrong. I pulled up the tape and cut from the rail side (quite short laps so they’re still on the curve) and it worked suprisingly well, much better than cutting straight down and into foam like I have before.
Next up is the deck, 2 x 6oz, im dead worried about wet out and air bubbles, though this may be less of an issue as curves are sloping down rather than up. I’m going to find the biggest bucket I can get my hands on and mix enough to glass a small yacht, scraping scraps last time was tearing through my last thread of sanity.
You never stop learning I guess and things like this bring you straight back down to earth. We call people who act above their skill level ‘Barry Big Potatoes’, I feel like this should be written on the deck of this one.
Cheers guys
