I shaped a 5’6 fish and I am really happy how the shape turned out. Now I tried to glass the board the other day after watching endless hours of glassing videos. I wanted to do a slightly tinted glassing (I’m using epoxy). So I taped off the deck to do cut laps, mixed my epoxy and poured it onto the fibreglass (4oz with 6oz fin patch). It worked kind of well except for the color which didn’t show as even as I hoped for. Anyway when I started to lap the rails I noticed I did way too many release cuts or just cut away too much of the cloth so that I had a lot of the foam not covered by cloth at the nose and the tail. I got really upset because it looked that shitty and decided in a split second to rip off the fibreglass again. I wiped off as much of the epoxy as I could but I now still have a blank which is already covered by a thin layer of epoxy. Do I sand it down and have a completely new try? Or do I glass over the epoxy?
So what you have now is basically a cheater coat that’s probably a little blotchy and maybe a little rough. Or, we could just call it a foam tint.
I would not attempt to sand it all off because it won’t come off evenly or completely unless you take a planer to the blank and really cut into it. What I would do instead is take a light pass with a sanding block to flatten the rough spots and prep for the next lamination, and then take another swing at the lamination. I might also consider using a different color for the lam so that the (presumably) blotchy spots in your foam tint will create an abstract look where your lam color will be stronger in some areas than others. In other words, embrace the imperfection and make it part of the presentation. “I meant to do that”
For traditional fish outlines I only do a single vee cut at the tip of the nose and tail tips and a straight cut at the buttcrack. I don’t do relief cuts on the rails because the cloth will conform if you don’t stretch it out prior to running resin. Start in the middle and work your way to both ends. Use both hands to bend the entire length of your spreader around that section of the curve so you can wrap the cloth straight down over the rail. If you’re new to glassing you might also consider running your lamination in 2 smaller batches, one per side. That’ll give you more leeway to really take your time with the resin (it’s better to move slowly with epoxy, anyway) and wrap your rails while the lam is fresh. And by the time you spread the excess resin from the 1st batch onto the 2nd side of the blank you’ll be better able to adjust the amount of resin you mix for that second batch - this will enable you to more easily reduce your wastage.
That’s not the only way to do it but it is one way. I’m sure there will be some other really good suggestions added to the thread, so read up and pick the ones that make sense to you.
Fiberglass Hawaii has a good video on doing rein foam stains. It might be a good idea to cover the mess by doing a a foam stain Acid splash on the foam and then do you lay up.
lightly sand what you have already done. Then mix a couple of diffrent batches of resin in diffrent colors . Acid splash rule of thumb is keep it simple over doing it with too many colors just turns the board into a muddy mess. Watch the Fiberglasd Hawaii videos. They are the best out there on the best way to glass and repairs Boards.
Next time, if you’re doing color in the lam + boxes, I would drop the boxes after the lam, then add clear 4oz fin patches, baste and feather. Much easier to get clean reuslt if you’re a beginner
Thank you so much for your reply I really appreciate it! I went to the workshop today and had a look at the blank for the first time after leaving it to dry when I messed up. And it’s not nearly as bad as I thought it would be. I wanted to go with a kind of amber tint so I think I’m just gonna mix in some more of the color so it’ll get darker than the yellowish color it is now. I had to order new fibrecloth so as soon as it arrives I will give it another go. I’m definitely only doing as little relief cuts as possible this time…
I rewatched the videos I think I have seen almost all of the fibreglass hawaii videos they’re really great! I think I’ll try to glass over my “foam tint” as gdaddy suggested and hope I’ll do better this time. Just because it took me ages to decide on a color or if I event want to try a tinted glass job on my first time doing one. And I think it could work because the color is quite light. But thanks if the tint would have turned out darker the acid splash would have been perfect I guess!
Yeah I bet it would have looked a lot nicer. I just didn’t like the idea of having to cut into the board after I managed to lamiate it… I felt safer somehow to do it before glassing it and taking the risk that I’m probably gonne have darker spots around the boxes. Lets see
Before you lam again, make sure your stringer is flat relative to the surrounding foam. But aside from that, the color you have plus whatever you add in the lam will probably make a more interesting and less airbrush-perfect color combo. You could use different (and hopefully complimentary) color, too. i haven’t done a resin color in a while but for abstracts I used to use the same pigment in different strengths to get multiple tones of the same color. And then accent with a little white or clear. A fingertip amount of resin for the accent is plenty.
