In the interest of time, I think I am going to buy a premade nidacore panel from LBI composites for a tank deck. Some 10mm/ 3/8" nidacore with 18oz woven roving. I am running out of time to lay up more panels. Plus I want to try this stuff.

I also gritblasted an area for a forward bulkhead. The place I can reach thru the false bottoms in the cubbys (binnacles?) under the bunks is a bit farther forward than I would like, but it is better than nothing. It might be 30" aft of the next bulkhead forward near the anchor locker, and a solid 60 inches forward of the cockpit (forward of tank compartment) bulkhead. If I had all summer for a rehab, I would approach this differently, but I want to use the boat, so this is the approach I will take.

I think this boat might have had the stringers re-tabbed or it was just pretty well done. I am not sure. But stringer tabbing looks good. Deck and bulkhead, not as much.

Of note: grey bilge paint disappears when you hit it with a sandblaster. Gelcoat doesn't. So I think the bilge will get more gelcoat. Or at least the tank deck surfaces.

A real grind
 

This weekend I did a lot of grinding. And sand blasting. And vacuuming. And solvent wiping. I did finally get the trapezoidal spacers trimmed and installed for the fuel tank hold forward bulkhead.

You can see the remnants of my vinylester patch-up from last year.

Of note: My main stringers were maybe 2 layers of heavy woven roving. Not super heavy. I patched my nick in the port stringer with vinylester and 4 layers of 17 oz biax in alternating orientations. The bukhead goes over top, so I wasn't going to skimp on a really hard to inspect spot.

And the plywood under the cockpit sole? Not even really glassed in. I am not impressed. Not sure that's original or not. I tried to seal it with neat vinylester while I was installing the biax.

This was a lot of work. But 8 months ago, this hold was a mushroom farm. http://www.classicseacraft.com/commu...2&postcount=18

The CF deck stiffener before I trim it back to ~1" flanges. It was a little dry so the peel ply print-thru is incomplete. But I only need 5 feet out of a 6 foot piece. It is an ugly under deck part. It will look better when I trim it, honest! But it rings like a bell when you tap it. :D

And the balsa core in the main deck. In a rough cut tank inspection hatch that I inherited.

Got the bulkhead in today. I have some resin burns from where it snuck around my moon suit when I was tabbing it in.

I have about 4 layers of 17 oz biax tabbing by the keelson. It is hard to get good wrap over the keelson, so there were a lot of smaller pieces. The balance got a layer of 1708 DBM and a layer of biax. Scantling rules call for a minimum of 22 oz, so that is covered.

I was running out of light and my lantern died. It looked good until I hit it with peel ply. At which point it wanted to stick to my gloves more than wet cloth. We will see if anything lifted.

The bulkhead is ~1" thick. A 3/4" core and just under 1/8" skins. It is far stiffer than 1" ply. And light, too.

I am *SO* glad to be done with under deck work. :eek:

The deck stiffener was a lot easier to trim than the bulkhead. I actually destroyed a carbide 5-1/2" blade. Not sure how, but it lost all the teeth. Thankfully there was a spare kicking around.

Ordered some 10mm nidacore panels with glass skins from LBI today for the tank deck and the interior where the original ply has rotted away.

Here is a section of the deck "hat section" stiffener from when I was trimming to length. Black hats, apparently.

Looking good

Nidacore panels from LBI showed up with 18 oz 0-90 woven roving. Weird white colored resin for the glass. I need to ask what it is, exactly.

The vinyl-ester resin I use turns white like this when cured. It starts out a redish bay brown color and once it starts to kick it turns whitish and once fully cured it is very white like what you have here. I read on the web about it before I bought mine and it is use for different reasons. One that I like is that it covers easy and you can paint over it with out much bleed threw of color. Also the under side of hatches and such may not even need to be coated at all if you are good with the look of the white. Another good thing about this type of resin is that it dose not shrink at all like most resins. It stays the same size or will actually will grow slightly. This helps retain shape better and you get less warping. It is mainly used for infusion injection molding but I have been laying it up by hand and what I have is thin enough you can easily vacuum bag with it. I was unsure about it at first but after using 50 gallons of it I like it.

Here is the resin fully wet:
http://i1291.photobucket.com/albums/...ps68fc1266.jpg

In this picture you can see it start to turn white first at the edges where it is thicker and kicks off faster:
http://i1291.photobucket.com/albums/...psc9b25502.jpg

In this picture it is almost cured white no paint just bare resin:
http://i1291.photobucket.com/albums/...psfa86137b.jpg

This is the same lay up as the first picture but now cured out but still just bare resin:
http://i1291.photobucket.com/albums/...ps6c5c4f95.jpg

resin oddity
 

Weird. Mine starts red-brown, then stirring in the MEKP, it goes red-green. Brushing it on it still has this translucent red-green-pink hue. It cures sort of yellowpink, like ginger root. But it is in no way white or opaque.

I believe I have Vipel F010-TBN-28 with a cobalt (napthenate) accelerator for room temp cure.

The elongation is 6.2% :D

Don't use a carbide blade for cutting glass laminate, use one of these on your side grinder:

http://www.homedepot.com/catalog/pro...c27441_300.jpg

Slices through it like a knife through warm butter. Doesn't have to be Dewalt brand. They're about 3 bucks at Home Depot or Lowes.