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Fiberglassing deck technique
By:Brad Grimm
Date: 12/30/2000, 6:04 pm

Hi all,
I've been lurking here for some months while building my first kayak (Arctic Tern). Thanks for all the great info and support!

I've had some difficulty with the stray strands of FG from the cut edges of the cloth, they can be a real mess to deal while applying the epoxy. So far I've done an OK job while glassing the inside and outside of the hull, but now it's time to tackle the deck, and of course any mistakes there will really show up. The Pygmy approach is to glass the deck with two pieces of cloth that overlap by a few inches in the middle. Masking tape is applied the full length of the hull below the shear for easy trimming once the epoxy is green.

My idea is to treat the deck overlap similar to the way that the shear edge is done. That is, to first epoxy one of the pieces of cloth and add a strip of masking tape across the deck to be able to easily trim the cut edge. Once that is cured, extra cloth trimmed, and tape removed I'll repeat the procedure for the second piece of cloth. The result should be a clean edge with no worries and trouble of dealing with those pesky stray strands.

Does this seem like a good idea? Are there other, better ways of dealing with stray strands? I hadn't seen this method described on the board which makes me wonder if there is a fatal flaw that I'm missing.

Thanks, Brad in Seattle

Messages In This Thread

Fiberglassing deck technique
Brad Grimm -- 12/30/2000, 6:04 pm
Re: Fiberglassing deck technique *Pic*
Tim -- 12/30/2000, 7:03 pm
Re: Fiberglassing deck technique *Pic*
Spidey -- 12/30/2000, 6:27 pm