I finished the bottom on my first glass job. As I expected the laps were the toughest part -they were either too wet to stick or too hardened to wrap.
I was left with some laps that wrapped, some laps that kicked while peeling off, and some laps that only stuck in certain places and some unsaturated cloth.
I cut off all the excess that kicked after it peeled off the board, and this is what i have left. How should I go from here?
Do I cut off all the untouched cloth or just go over when i glass the deck?
Do i patch up parts without laps when I glass the deck?
Welcome to the learning curve. It could have been much worse. Anyways, wet out the dry cloth by brushing on resin (baste the rails). When that kicks, light sand the laps and get rid of the high spots. Glass the deck as normal. It’ll be just fine. I could tell you a couple of my personal disaster stories, but suffice it to say, yours doesn’t look all that bad.
Here’s a couple of tricks that others shared with me that helped a lot.
1- Don’t leave the cloth dangling over the edge, rather fold the lap up, onto the deck (or in your case the bottom). That way you can wet out the laps on the deck without the resin dripping off. Once all the cloth is wet out you can fold it down over the rails.
2- Use a 3" paint roller to attach the lap to the under side of the board. It’s easier than using a squeegee- you have no resin dripping down your wrists and you get the lap saturated easily.
Oh, and I hope you don’t mind me saying this- but as long as you’re doing free laps you should try to cut the cloth really straight and even, trying not to leave big strands hanging. The lap line will show faintly.
If that board was sitting in my garage right now here’s what I would do…
Write down in your note book how much catalyst used for the volume of resin. Also record the air temp at time of lam.
Next time use less catalyst if the air temp is the same.
For the repair…
Mix up about 3 oz of lam resin using about 10 drops of catalyst per oz. (More cat if air temp is less than 75)
Use a paint brush to apply resin to dry cloth. Try not to make a mess. Push it down good with brush.
After it hardens sand with 60 grit sand paper. Try not to damage bare foam
Lam the other side
I have a catalyst chart posted in my workshop that I got from Swaylocks. I’ve seen links to Fiberglass Supply or Fiberglass Hawaii with good catalyst charts. Search around
I tried folding the laps up at first was ok, but here’s a the way I’ve started using recently which makes it easy even for me to get my laps wet out nicely.
After wetting out the deck, go around the laps with a stiff piece of plastic about A4 size. Lift the laps with the plastic so the glass is sitting on top, and then squeegee your resin across the unsaturated glass.
It’s quite easy to get the laps as dry or wet as you want them with this method, without dripping loads of resin on the floor. Prob not as quick for an experienced production laminator, but for backyard stuff it’s great.
You should have seen my last project (EEK). I had bubbles all the way around the rail. Talk about a pain in the rear to fix. A long story short, a bunch of little holes drilled in and 5 or 1 minute epoxy did the trick. (The 1 minute stuff is really cool, it comes with a needle shaped attachment that mixes the epoxy as soon as it comes out, so I could just stick it into the hole I drilled and fill. Plus, it was really thick and dried fast so cleanup was easy-less drips.)
glad to have made someone laugh … [that’s the Aussie way , of course !]
it’s funny how that has become my favourite home made board so far …maybe after the amount of time I had to spend fixing it , I just MADE myself love it ?!
