Feb. 1st-3rd

Hi all!!!! Sorry for my delays in Posting but I have been very busy with work. For all of you that I haven't told in person, I have decided to push the completion date ahead on my boat. In order to have met the first semester deadline I would have had to have had the boat completed by early February, and with shipping delays and just overall workload, this wasn't a possibility. So therefore, I have decided to work on the boat part time around work, and have it completed for graduation in late May at the latest. So with that in mind, my posts will nto be as frequent as before due to my limited work time every week. Without further adue, here is what did last...

Today I spent on the bottom half of the bottom panel. First, I remade my sac sheets and covered them in plastic to place my bottom panels on. (look familiar?)

Then , I glued the key joint of the bottom panel together with the peanut butter like epoxy compound. And lastly, I glued the butt joints of the side pieces for extra width.

(bottom panels ready for assembly and epoxy)

(Bottom key joint assembled)

(Bottom joints glued with epoxy/wood flour compound)
(peanut butter like epoxy)

After epoxying the joints I mixed up a relatively small batch of clear epoxy and spread it over the bottom in order to provide a tack coat for the Kevlar to be applied next. Kevlar floats in epoxy, unlike fiberglass due to its density, and therefore needs to be glued down before it can be wet out. After the tack caot had an hour to "tack" up, I rolled out the Kevlar and smoothed it out on the sticky epoxy. An hour later I mixed up more clear epoxy and wet out the Kevlar. Next I rolled out fiberglass onto the wet out Kevlar and then wet out the glass with more epoxy. Lastly I placed plastic covered boards onto the joints and heavily weighted them for drying.

(tack coat applied to bottom panel)
(Kevlar laid out on tack coat)

(Bottom panel fiberglassed)
(Bottom panel weighted and drying)

Thanks again for looking, and if all goes well, a couple more days of work and I will have a hull!