Sunday, February 28, 2016

Glueing bottom of hull

Bottom of bow section
The Gorilla Construction Glue seems to work fairly well so far. I ended up using up almost the entire tube for the stabilizer floats and the deck, hull sides and bulkheads, as well as attaching the bottom of the bow section of the hull. A little excess glue ended up squeezing out here and there, but it was readily wiped off with a paper towel.
As can be seen from the top photo I used a variety of heavy objects and some clamps to form the 2 inch thick bottom piece against the other part.
After the bow section set and a fresh tube of glue obtained ($7 at Ace Hardware) the middle and rear sections were attached. Additional glue was used as a filler/caulking agent where gaps appeared between the pieces.
Bottom of central and stern sections
Once everything had set I then ran the orbital sander with shop vac attachment over the sides of the hull to remove high spots. This might have been a mistake. The alternative would have been to have filled in the low spots with some lightweight filler, say a mix of resin and microballoons, plus some light sanding. That would have potentially kept the hull shape a little more consistent, but would have added weight.
Glue has set
Regardless, the weight of the hull at this time is about 10 pounds. The fore deck wave splitter still needs to be added, which will probably be another 2 or 3 pounds, and then the glass will add a bunch more.

The bottom edges have also been sanded to a nice curvature (more towards the bow, less towards the stern. This was pretty quick and easy to do with a sanding block and long, even strokes. Yes - a longboard would probably work better to keep things more even, but I don't have one (yet).

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