First Stabilizer Glued

Yesterday was spent out on the water near Olympia at the Sound Rowers Budd Inlet Race. I took some 650+ photos, and edited it down to 630. They were finally uploaded and posted this afternoon - leaving me a couple of hours to work on the new boat!

First, I replaced the belt in the sander. It was an old, well used 50 grit, and it took two trips to Sears to get a good replacement. The new belt is a 48" x 6" 50 grit, and it is perhaps a bit too quick at material removal. The second stabilizer's tips are perhaps half the thickness of the first stabilizer, and it took only 5 minutes to do all four ends.

Just for fun I weighed one of the stabilizers with the foam pieces. It was about 3 pounds, according to my more or less accurate scale.

The next step was to actually glue a stabilizer together. After lining the workbench with a sheet of waxed paper, I set the top piece on it. I nudged the paint cans towards the piece so that the waxed paper was folded up on both sides of the stabilizer's top piece. This would prevent the epoxy from sticking to the paint cans when they were shoved against that piece and the sides of the stabilizer.

After mixing about a cup of epoxy resin, using a paper hot beverage cup for the container and reused chop stick, I squeegeed the resin all over what is to become the interior surface of the top piece.

I then remembered that I would have to apply resin to the side pieces as well and needed a place to apply resin to the them that wouldn't leave a mess. Quickly I laid another length of waxed paper on the floor of the garage and placed the first side piece on it.

I dribbled some resin down its length on its inward side and squeegeed the resin all over the broad surface as well as the edges. After separating the board from the waxed paper it was put on the top piece on the workbench in roughly the correct position.

The second side piece was then covered in resin on the inward side as well the top and bottom edges. It was placed on the workbench adjacent to the other side piece.

I rubbed the bulkhead foam pieces in the excess resin on the waxed paper on the floor, and put them in place between the two sides of the stabilizer on the bench. The paint cans were adjusted to squeeze against the top piece and to keep the sides flush with it.


At the ends I folded the excess waxed paper over and held the ends together using plastic chip bag clips. These provided adequate clamping action and spread the force over a reasonable area.

At the stern I had two somewhat smaller clips to cover the larger area.

The remain 1/3 cup of epoxy was getting quite warm by this time. In fact, it had actually started solidifying. Rats! It would have been the perfect amount to have finished coating the bottom piece and the remaining edges. I poked at it with the chopstick and it went "poof", with a small vapor cloud emanating from it. It was nasty!

There was a bit of liquid resin below the solid section, so I tried to apply it to the top piece. I only needed a little! This was not a smart thing to do. I had forgotten how gooey this stuff gets when it has begun hardening.

I had to scrape off as much as I could, then clean the squeegee.


Hurriedly I mixed about a 1/4 cup of resin and applied it to the bottom piece. Before placing it on the other pieces on the workbench I took the chopstick and sort of dribbled and painted it on the edges of the sides. It work pretty well, though there were a couple of drips here and there.

The bottom panel was applied and centered. A weight was placed on the section that bends upward at the bow so that the panel would meet.

I noticed that the sides were not quite flush with the top piece. Adding a big hunk of iron to the center section solved that problem.

Hmm, the side pieces were sticking out on either side by a millimeter or two. Adjusting the pain cans didn't solve that, so I added a few C-clamps along the length, lightly closed. Some additional weights were applied at various places to help make sure that there were no gaps between the pieces at the seams.

The whole process took about an hour.

According to the instructions provided with the resin I have 72 hours to finish working with this stabilizer before I would have to sand it for a subsequent application of resin. Tick, tick....