Deck glassing

Time to glass the hull. I started at the transom and worked towards the bow. Using 50″ wide 1708 bi axle fiberglass. Very easy if you take you take your time and plan. Oh and have someone mixing resin, I do 1 pint at a time and have my mixer feed me freshly mixed resin as I go along. Mixing the polyester resin in small amounts in this way my resin doesn’t kick over and harden faster than I can use it.



Layout your glass fabric and place it where it needs to go. Then just fold the first part of fabric towards you exposing the wood underneath. Wet out the wood where you just folded the fabric away from then fold the fabric back over the wood and onto the freshly laid resin. Now your fabric is stuck down in place and you were able to keep it in position. Next wet out that same section of fabric from the top. Moving back towards the bow of the boat mark the deck at the end of the fabric so you know where to stop laying resin, then fold the other half of the fabric away from you exposing the wood and apply resin up to your mark, fold back the fabric then just wet out the fabric till opaque or clearish. Its best to use a bubble busting roller to remove the air pockets and bubbles that have formed under all the fabric you just wet out. Repeat until the whole deck is done.



Tip * You can choose to either go up the gunwale again like you did with the tape fabric or just end your fabric somewhere over the tape on the deck. I knew I had just about enough resin to complete this entire job so I opted to stop on top of the tape on the deck. But the other way would have been a stronger deck to sidewall connection.





Here is the deck completely glassed over and dry the next day. I had tented in the hull with a 30ft tarp and set a small electric heater inside to make sure I had enough heat to cure the polyester resin, The daytime temps were 65F this day and the night got to about 55F. I used 1.5% – 2% MEKP also to help the cure along.


I used a oscillating multi tool to cut out any hairs or bumps created by the fiberglass and a plain old 6″ wide spackling knife to scrap the surface and look for bumps to clean up the surface to prep for the gel coat.