Batboat Rebuild: Day 38 July 27th, 2009

Put in about five hours of work today, including rest periods and a cold shower break. It was very hot and sunny out!

First order of the day was to check out the peanut butter repairs I made to the center deck section. Even though the peanut butter was mixed a little on the dry side they turned out alright.

Those and the rest of the underside were sanded down with a 40 grit disc. The ruff surface gives the fiberglass resin something better to hold on to.


I laminated large scraps of 1.5 oz csm cloth to this and later ground off the excess fiberglass cloth from the other two deck sections that were fiberglassed two days before.

It was so hot outside there was no need to mix more than the minimum recommended amount of MEKP activator in with the poly resin. The hot sun did the work.

Polyester resin is mixed with it hardener, MEKP. The two generate heat which hardens the resin. The more MEKP added, the more heat. The more heat the less time it takes for the resin to harden. It does not take long for the poly to harden in this kind of weather!

What to do with extra resin? I painted it on the top of this deck.

There were some high points in spots along the tops of the stringers. I ground those down and fit in the deck sections.



Hours later after that resin had set, the excess cloth on the middle ply was ground off and set in the Batboat.


Looks nice, to me. A little more work has to be done on the stringers and the deck will then be fiberglassed in.

I was going to repair some of the areas on the stringers where the cloth did not lay right but the sky was turning dark and cloudy. It looked like rain was coming so I started to put stuff away. Rain fell just as I secured the tarp.

It was not suppose to rain all day, according to weather.com, but while working on the Batboat I've discovered that weather.com is wrong the majority of the time. Downpour started at 4:50 :(