Yesterday was a fine day for glasswork. I drove down to the shop and got the heat pumping in there. I decided to go with polyester resin on this restore. Polyester is a little more finicky than epoxy. It only has a 3-4 month shelf life. Mixing a quart of resin only requires a few drops of hardener to start the reaction process. The epoxy we used on the 23 was a 1 to 1 mixture so this was a bit of a change. Likewise - when the temperature is over 55 degrees, you have very little working time with polyester resin. By that i mean just a couple of minutes before it starts to tack up. Also - if you are only doing 1 layer, you need to add in a parafin wax or the surface will remain tacky. If you don't add in wax, then you can add additional layers without sanding. In any case, the polyester stuff was all a little new too me.
I bought my material from here. Heck of a nice guy to deal with and you can pickup your order if you're local.
http://www.fiberglasssite.com
Here's a tip if you ever do a floor the way i'm doing this one. Go to harbor freight and spend $15 and pick up one of these :
I chiseled out the wood in the boat by hand the old fashioned way, with a hammer and chisel. I had enough of hitting myself in the hand with the hammer so after some research i came up with the air chisel. I still had to remove the wood from the top skins i cut up out of the boat and it worked like a dream. Quick and easy :
I decided to use a regular exterior grade plywood on this deck. The original plywood was only 1/2", 4 layers, and had plenty of voids in it, so i do not think it was a marine plywood. It lasted a long time and was not taken care of, so i think this should work perfectly fine. Polyester resin doesn't like cold temps so i first started by heating up the inside of the boat.
I cut some cloth and layed it up on any holes through the bottom skin. The screws used to hold down the console were pretty long and went through the bottom skin. I patched the holes before laying down the plywood.
I taped everything off because im trying to avoid hours and hours of sanding spilled resin :
I mixed up some resin and thickened it with cabosil to a peanut butter consistency. Spread it on my bottom skin then laid in my new plywood. I cut solid pieces of wood instead of the 5x5 squares that came out. I hope this will tighten up the floor and make it stronger. Weighed it all down and let it set up :
Other side done as well (buckets filled with water)
With the extra thickened resin, i went around the edges and seams and made a nice fillet to seal it all up
I left everything to set up and took my old fuel tank to the fabricator to have a new one built. I'm looking at about 3 weeks to get the new tank. In the meantime i hope to get some bulkheads in and slats for the tank to sit on. I need to order new fuel lines and hopefully by the first of april i can re-install the tank. My next trip home i will glue the topskins back down to my new plywood, grind out the seam and then seal it up with some 2 - 3" wide cloth and resin.
One thing to note - all of this was so much easier the second time around. It almost feels natural and not even a big deal. I remember the first boat everything was so much slower because we stopped at every increment to think things through. If i didn't have to drive 100 miles to work on this boat, i would have it done and ready for power within 2 months.
Oh well - til next time................
-Mike