Sun Monkey Island: 'Glass Ceiling

It was a race against the clock that I ultimately lost, not without trying, anyway. Mother Nature indeed reared her ugly head and dumped a February storm on us on the first day of May. Owatonna, a town 90 miles south of the Twin Cities, got over 15 inches of snow. Let me put that in perspective: Last year, we didn't get more than 15 inches all year (granted, it was a down year for snow). To say we are frustrated is an insult to frustrated people. While we didn't get the 6 inches as promised, it did fall to 40 degrees with overnight lows pushing 32. That's freezing to you and me and not great for boatbuilding.

All of this means that the hoped for hull construction will not happen this weekend, and maybe that's for the better, because I've spent the better part of the last couple days figuring out how to lay down fiberglass on 16 foot panels in a cold garage. It's not easy to do well, as I soon learned.

I found the space heater we use for the 3-season sunroom and set that up near the garage door. Then I cranked the house heat up to 73 and left the door open to the garage. We have a mudroom, as is typical up here, which is a small alcove that sits between the house proper and the garage. By small, I mean maybe 2 feet by 2 feet. It's a place to wipe your feet before you enter the house, though the garage is so small you have to walk back outside and then up the passenger side of the car to get in the house that way. No matter; it worked fine as a garage until I decided to put a boat kit in it. Between the space heater and the house, it's a comfortable 65 degrees in the garage.

Still, this isn't a blog about my garage, but about boatbuilding. I fixed some of the issues I had over the last few days, such as re-trimming the nose block and pouring the lead. I also screwed down the keelson. It felt good to be done with the keel assembly.

Epoxy runs for the rhinoplasty on the nose - before ....

...and after. Not perfect but better than missing the front 1/4 of the keel nose.

Test fit of Floor 4 and the keelson. All good here.

The first step is to join the panels together. I'd mentioned in an earlier post that the bilge panels weren't joined very well. The good news is I learned from that mistake and came up with pretty solid joints afterwards. Both the side panels and the topsides came out OK.

View of topside joints before and after sanding.

With a bit of the mojo back, I pressed on and laid out the 'glass for the topsides. Since the garage floor is pretty dirty and I had a couple other panels in there, the only remaining space was the living room floor.

Rolling out 'glass on the topsides. Tiger, my Pomeranian, is utterly bored by the whole thing.

Laid out the 'glass I'll need for the lower hull assembly. When there's room in the garage these will go on.

The downside to using the living room floor is that it's the living room floor. Hair, dust, and invisible things are in the rug which then gets picked up by the 'glass itself and happily transferred to the wood and the 'glass during the epoxy pour. It was no fun to carefully and methodically remove any items that could cause problems. However, the good news is if the ship ever goes down with me in it, someone can take the DNA from the hair strands entombed in there and give a positive ID on the skipper, which would be identified as a 5 pound Pomeranian.

I told you landlubbers to reef the mains'il and cleat the jibsheets, aargh!!

A few learnin' items to pass onto future builders. I know the manual says to use a plastic spreader for the first layer on the 'glass. I did this for the first side panel, even buying a brand new one from my friends at Wal Mart. But it didn't work very well. It kept pulling the 'glass in the direction I was spreading and pushed the epoxy off the ends. This technique might work if the 'glass were cropped close to the edge and you were working on, say, a ping pong table. But on the floor of a garage, no, it doesn't really work. It took a lot of pumps to get the side panel to epoxy over, over 50? That seems like too much.

Another problem with the spreader is the edges don't get enough epoxy. With a foam roller, I could easily work epoxy into the edges and not worry about runoff. That's exactly what I did on the topside panel, the second panel of the day. Wow, what a difference. Smooth, clear, and right to the edge.

Side and topside panels drying.

A good technique I found was to pour out the epoxy in streaks of a couple feet long with some overlaps, then take the roller and spread the epoxy in one direction. For example, pour the epoxy, put the roller into the epoxy, run a couple feet, pick up the roller, go back to where you started, and do it again. This runs the 'glass in one direction and prevents wrinkles from building up. It also allows the 'glass to catch the epoxy and hold fast. Until maybe I do the flip and 'glass the outside of the bilge panels, I'm not going back to the spreader. That buddy's retired.

The only downside is the foam roller starts to decompose after about 15 minutes from the epoxy reaction. You know this is happening because the epoxy starts 'blushing' .. it's not really blush but the foam roller literally melting into the 'glass. Stop immediately and switch rollers and you'll be good to go.

With the side and topside panels drying, I suited up for sanding. Bulkheads 1, 2, and 7 were awaiting their 120 grit treatment and their cleat trimming. An added bonus is I got some earphones to hide in my ear muffs and pumped in some Pandora. Sanding is so, so much better with music. The first half was a nice Spanish Guitar station. The second half was DJ Tiesto. Before I knew it, all the bulkheads were done and ready for the install (pending a quick epoxy of the freshly cut cleats on the bigger bulkheads and the extra circle for running electrical wires through the floors). I also stopped trying to get that last square inch out of each sanding pad. If it's not working well, it goes in the trash.

Finishing up the bulkhead prep. The bottom half of Bulkhead 2 sanded to 120. The top half still not sanded. What a difference a sanding makes.

I then also toyed a bit with the bilge pump I got today. It's a Whale 650, meant to be installed in the bilge (duh) to clear any water that gets in there. It's not really meant to save the ship in the event of a catastrophe; it simply won't dump enough. But it can make things comfortable and reduce, if not eliminate, any sloshing around if the cabin gets wet. Just a small peace of mind plus gives me an excuse to upgrade the circuit panel from 5 to 13.