: For my coaming fillet, I bought a single yard of 18oz woven roving from US
: Composite. The strands are pretty thick on this stuff. I put some epoxy in
: the joint to make it sticky, then pulled threads out of the roving and
: laid them into the epoxy end to end, going around teh coaming a few times
: until I had the desired build up. It came out clear and seamed to do a
: good job.

Good idea. For those who don't have pieces of the heavier glass fabric (woven from thicker glass yarns) the same process can still be used. All they have to do is takes some scrap pieces of glass and cut them into 1/4 inch wide strips. these can be anywhere from 4 inches long to 4 or 5 feet long. Depends on how big of a piece you want to wrestle with. I wouldn't go much longer than a couple inches more than the circumference of the coaming. If you are going to use stuff shorter than 5 inches you might as well chop it into 1 to 2 inch fibers and just mix them into a paste with your resin.

As you are cutting these thin strips, a lot of the short, crosswise threads will fall out, so work over a sheet of newsppaer to capture them. Then mix them in to thicken the resin. The remaining longer pieces fill in the fillet to give it body and great strength. Wet them by dipping to your resin, then wrap them around the the joint and pack in as many of those as you need to give some body and size to your fillet. The weight and weve of the cloth you are starting with is going to determine how much glass fiber you are packing in. It you are cutting up light cloth you'll need more strips than if you are cutting up heavier cloth.

Putting a couple of twists into the strips makes those lengthwise fibers into a short twisted rope which won't have as many loose ends. The fibers trap a lot of resin between the strands due to capillary forces. The trapped resin isn't exactly thickend, but it doesn't run, so that is about the same thing.

I think one of the questions was "Why do this?", or maybe, "Why not do something different?" The anser is more easily seen and felt than explained with words. Pick up a fiberglass fishing pole and examine it. If you don't have one at home, check one out at any Wal-Mart, or K-mart or sporting goods store. It is strong and flexible, but at the tip it is very thin, yet durable. When you have one in your hands the tactile sensation of trying to bend it gives you a better understanding of the inherent strength.

What is being created with the fillet, is essentially a piece of fiberglass (much like that fishing pole) which is cast in place in the exact shape of the pieces which need reinforcement. When you later go over this fillet with a layer of glass cloth (or more) you are now creating something out of fiberrglass which is like an angle iron ("L" cross-section) with that fillet as the backbone. The strength is magnified.

PGJ