Woods Skoota 32DM

[fallguy1000]

I am running the resin at 110% of the weight of the fiberglass. So, when I weighed things out today, I am running a batch of resin for say 12.65# of glass at 14# of resin. Of course, the yield is lower for some losses in the breather and peelply, but I would say I will be very close to 50/50 after all is said and done.

Today we laminated the first large panel. It did not go flawlessly, we had some of the fiberglass develop runs. The stitching caught on the cutting table and it just got worse and worse as we rolled it out.. We ended up putting a couple (probably unneeded patches of 18 ounce biax tapes with mat into the lamination. It won't happen again as we will only cut out fiberglass over a plastic sheet from now on. I did buy a part roll of perforated release film. It wasn't cheap at about $570, but I liked the result tons. We still had bleed through, but the breather fabric was not saturated.

A picture of the first side panel on the laminating table. Part is 32' 5" long !
A picture of the jig with the bottom pieces. The starboard panel is on the port side to see if it is a mirror fit-that is the one we laminated today.

[fallguy1000]

I should add we used Silvertip Xtra slow hardener. It kicked in a bucket at 105 minutes. Definitely took longer on the part.

[Jeff]

fallguy1000, wow, 105 minutes, that is truly a special mixture!!! Nice work by the way, Jeff

[fallguy1000]

The tds said 120 minutes. Our environment was perhaps 5 degrees above the tds I'd say, but I'm guessing. We are in an air conditioned environment, but I am not running any returns from the epoxy filled environment to reduce the air pollution in the building. After we laminated today, we opened the garage doors. Unfortunately, it was raining and the skeeters are Florida bad now, so we can't work open air. It was smelly!

We had all our work done (both sides laminated, and repairs made to the problem areas, and probably could have ran a little wetter on the bottom laminate) in 80 minutes. We spent a lot of extra time dealing with the runs in the glass. Not sure how our patches are going to look, but I think things will be okay. The table is flat, so when we add 0.020 - 0.030 in fiberglass on a flat lamination, my guess is the epoxy will fill in any void. Tomorrow will tell.

We did have 3 guys and that made a big difference. It is going to be hard to do the big panels with less than 3 people because you need to lay the panel down sort of precisely on the laminated fiberglass. I am planning to laminate the other side Friday (hired help). I sort of see the upside to infusion as well. If you could infuse the panel, all the setup is done when you shoot the epoxy and the epoxy rolling baloney is not needed, but I'd really need to see someone do it a few times first and Silvertip is really not infusion resin.

[Eric1]

I think y'all are doing a great job. I've done some vacuum work but on a much smaller scale. It is simple in theory but in practice I found it to be tricky to get right. Build On!

[Jeff]

Nice work fallguy1000!!! I am going to learn quite a bit with your build!! Jeff

[Tungsten]

Looks good,If you need more open time on the resin, infusion epoxy has a much longer open time.
Try not to leave the resin in the pail.Mix and dump it all out then trowel it all around.

When i was doing my build i was using 30 grams of resin for ea sq/ft of the corecell to wet out the foam,is that what your getting?

[fallguy1000]

Not sure on the foam wetout per foot. We dumped about a quart into the paint tray. So call it 60 square feet and a quart, or 1/2 ounce per sq ft. A bit lighter than you.

I weighed out the fiberglass and went to 110% with the resin for each layer of glass (weight is same for 2).

I then wetted the foam on the side facing down while we also wetout the glass on the table to sat, but we are not wetting the foam on the side up. Why? Gravity and vac is our friend on the upside. Although there is some risk of dry joint I suppose. I was concerned about having trouble adjusting the glass if we put it down on wetted foam. We will wet the next ones as...

we had excess resin for the final piece, like 10% (the stuff that kicked). So perhaps next time I will wetout the core to be 100% sure we don't have a dry joint. The reality is that we are using more resin on the lower laminate as there are losses in the table and laminate floating and resin creeping under the rebates, etc.

I had considered taking 5-10% of the inside laminate resin to the outside (table side)to speed things a bit. Then we'd be resin richer on the outside of the hull. We are already running at more than 50% resin, so I'd be a little nervous about making the boat a bit too brittle, but not sure.

Any thoughts are welcome. I think for sure I will wetout the foam on the upside next time as I didn't like having excess, but I'd still be able to go faster with a little more resin on the table side. The other option would be to reduce the 110% on the interior side to 100%. A few people have suggested 45% resin and I'm much higher now.

We'd struggle to wetout the bottom even at resin = glass.

[fallguy1000]

I should add that we stopped wetting the table prior to laying down the first piece of glass. There is no dry joint risk and I found I was moving rebates, getting seepage under the rebates, and it was taking longer as the glass is sitting there when the mix is done, ready for the pour.

[fallguy1000]

Looks like I am trapping a bit of air under my part. Any ideas how to avoid that? maybe slower take up and or less pressure?