Glassing the hull

Glassing the hull

Before the actual glassing starts there is allot of preparation to be done. The fiberglass needs to be cut to the right length and marked on the hull where it’s going to be. The peel-ply also needs to be cut to the right length and the rollers and brushes and spatulas needs to be ready before the resin is mixed because the resin cures quickly and goes off and hard. The resin is rolled on the inside skin of the hull over the cedar strip planking and the foam for the resin to saturate the pores. Then the EDB 400 fiberglass cloth is laid out on the marks where it should fit in the hull and then soaked in resin. The resin is spread with rollers, brushes or spatulas and the bubbles needs to be removed and eliminate any spanning in the cloth. The peel-ply is laid on top of the glass. Peel-ply is special for a couple reasons 1. Fiberglass takes on the shape and texture of peel-ply and removes excess resin. 2. It keeps the glass from getting contaminated and it peels off easily. We decided to start glassing from the middle aft and do the bow section last because it still needed to be coved. Rob Shaw the designer of this 5.5 yacht wanted the overlaps of the fiberglass to be no less than 40mm and no more than 50mm and 50mm would be the ideal overlap. Every overlap on this boat is 50mm more or less