Batboat Rebuild: Day 25 June 11, 2009

A had a few frustrating days off from working on the Batboat due to rain.

Finally, back to work! :)

Using 1708 biaxial fiberglass cloth and polyester resin I patched in the spots where my grinder went down a little too far into the hull when I took out the stringers.

1708 cloth is much stronger than the woven cloth used to make the boat. The patches are heavy duty and permanent.

Strips of 1708 were cut to size for every gouge. One side of the cloth is woven fiberglass and the other chopped mat strand. The chopped mat side faces down when bonding it to old hulls.

From the amount of cloth I cut you can guess that it is easy to remove too much hull when using a coarse grit flapper disc.

The fixed spots become seamless. Can you see them?

The ridges of the fiberglass roller squeeze out excess resin and air pockets. The less resin you have in the cloth the stronger the cured fiberglass becomes.

Once one side was finished I took a break and waited for the resin to cure then went to work on the other side. Some of it wasn't completely cured, however, making my Tyvek suit stick to the hull as I sat in it. lol!