Chine Flats installed and inside bottom fiberglassed

Well, it has been a long past few days. Very hot and raining.  Oh well, the boat build goes on.  Have to get in the work while I can, going to Connecticut next week.

So, the first order of business was getting the inside the keel seam filled and fiberglassed.  This entailed making lots of peanut butter like epoxy filler and smearing it on the inside seam to fill it in, get it smooth and ready for fiberglass.  I didnt get any pictures of this, because it was fast and furious work to get it mixed and spread before starting to turn into a meteor in the cup.

This is the after picture, after getting the seam filled with all that epoxy glue!

After the seam was filled, I started cutting fiberglass tape.  This seam got three layers, a 4 inch 10 oz, then a 6 inch 12 oz biaxial,  followed by a 8 inch 10 ounce.  This was a lot of glassing!

 Thanks to my daughter, she set me up with this sweet pizza cutter and mat that makes cutting the fiberglass a snap!

 This biax is tough, thick stuff!

 First tape going down.

 I used this fiberglass roller a few times.  It came in handy when there were bubbles that could not be gotten out with a spreader or foam roller.

Next I installed the chine flats.  This involved putting some boards on top of the hull bottom and clamping the chine flats underneath, then using zip ties to connect to the hull.  Then I used epoxy stitches to weld them in place.  After that, I cut the wire ties and filled the rest of the gap with epoxy.

So after the filling, there was still quite a few flaws that needed to be filled.  I just mixed up some plastic wood putty and filled the rest of the flaws with this, so I would not have to wait for the epoxy to dry.

That dried in about 20 minutes, so I just sanded it down smooth with some 80 grit on the orbital sander.
Next up, is fiberglassing the chine / bottom seam.  This was similar to the bottom seam, but only needed the 12 oz biaz and 10 oz top for the glass.

 The Bow

 Here is the bow with the chines installed and the seam taped.

 Here is the bottom with the chines installed and all seams taped.

Here I am, very glad to be done filling and taping for the day!

OK, up next is cutting the very front of the chines.  All I had to do was follow the dark Sharpie line with the jigsaw.  Well, the port side went fine, the starboard was a problem.  Near the bow where the chine gets very thin, the jig saw blade went awry and the front of the chine was cut too deep.  Oh well, I just epoxied a shim on, and will trim it later.

Finally, it was time to fiberglass the entire bottom with 38 inch wide, 10 ounce cloth.  I cut all the sheets in the A/C and rolled them up and had my wife help me lay them out.

After that, it was mixing time.  I mixed up around 12 cups of epoxy that were 28 ounces each to get the fiberglass wetted out.  Here it is getting close:

 Me throwing back a cold one. One of many...

Almost there...

Finally, I got it glassed, and then a nice thick fill coat rolled on.  Now it is very smooth and ready to flip over.  Tomorrow, I am going to get some help and get this bottom flipped over so I can fill the keel seam.  After that, I start building the main hull upside down!

Epoxy makes great fly paper!