Final resin coat

The hull-mounted aka bracket turned out 50% fine and 50% garbage. On one side the cloth laid nice and flush against the wood on all sides. On the other side it pulled away to make large bubbles, except on the underside where the cloth was pressed against the plastic covered bench.

I removed most of cloth on the bubble side of the bracket using a Moto-tool equipped with a flexible shaft and a tiny sanding drum. It is simply amazing how effect that tiny drum is in removing cured fiberglass!

I used that drum to remove most of the excess resin and glass from the bracket. It fit quite nicely in the filleted corners to round out the rough edges.

The sanding drum generates a lot of very fine particles that I could detect working their way around the seal between my respirator mask and my face. To solution was to hold the shop vac hose next to the drum to suck up the waste. That worked quite well.

After cleaning up once again I tried to glass the ugly side of the aka bracket, and to apply a thin coat of resin to the stabilizers and the final coat on the main hull.

This time, rather than resin the top and side surfaces at the same time I chose to apply resin only to the top surface so as to reduce the occurrence of drips. This was mostly successful, though I managed to miss a couple here and there.

Yesterday I glassed the rudders and made an attempt to fix the still ugly side of the aka bracket, and apply resin to one side of the main hull and the stabilizers. The rudders turned out OK, though they would have been better if they were stood on end rather than laid flat on the plastic covered bench. The excess resin would have pooled at the tip rather than creating a thick bubbly layer. Attacking it with the orbital sander worked fairly well to remove the excess resin.

Since the resin was still slightly soft it came off the surface in larger particles rather than dust. Not bad - perhaps it would clog the shop vac filter somewhat less.

I sanded the drips on the hull and stabilizer, too.

I decided that I would put a hatch in the seat back. This would server two purposes:
1. It would allow me to access the inside of the seat back to apply fillet material and maybe some glass to help better secure the seat to the hull.
2. The space could be used for storage, such as a Camelback water supply, or items that would be accessed when not under way.

Anyway, the chosen panel needed to be glassed on the inside so as to help replace some of the strength lost by the hole for the hatch.

I used 4 oz cloth on the inside and put the seat to one side to cure.

I rediscovered the reason it is better to sand the resin after it has cured. The uncured resin can stay white when a new layer of resin is applied. This obscures the wood finish. Sigh...at least it wasn't in an area that would be too easily seen!