Skip to main content

Fiberglass fitted to inside of Borealis hull

One last step tonight before tomorrow's big glue job of epoxying the inside of the hull. Tonight I fitted the fiberglass into the hull and taped it to the sides.

ALTERNATIVE STEP FROM THE OFFICIAL PYGMY MANUAL: My biggest suggestion in this step that varies from the official Pygmy manual is buy an additional 18' or so of fiberglass cloth from Pygmy! The official manual has you use two overlapping scraps of cloth. It's just sorta cheap and could potentially leave you with an ugly area of overlapping but not perfectly flat glass. Rather, just spend a little bit of extra money and buy a run of fiberglass that will fit the entire inside. This will also leave you with an entire run to fiberglass the deck later on too. I'm not entirely sure why Pygmy decided to skimp in this one area, but it's never sat well with many builders.

I laid my full run of cloth down the hull and ran one side along the tape. You then smooth it out as best you can and tape the edge every foot or so. The remainder can be cut from the opposite side. Then smooth out that other side and tape its edges too.

At the bow and stern you will have to make a cut or two to enable the cloth to lay smoothly.

This is what the hull looked like tonight, ready for tomorrow's epoxy job...


Here is the bow with an extra piece of cloth to cover the area where I had to cut the main piece. I goofed and ended up with an area that had no cloth at all. Oops. But this will work out just fine. Besides, once the deck is installed no one will ever see this far up the bow ever again, even when the hatches are installed later.



Here is the stern with the small piece of overlapping cloth. This is what the bow should have looked like but I screwed it up instead. Oh well... it's all easy to fix!


Wish me luck tomorrow during the epoxying of the inside! It's a bit tricky at times but by being careful and paying attention to runs it should look OK when done. Of course I'll post pictures!


Peace!



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Rogue Manual

I've posted about this earlier, but thought it might be good to post it again for anyone who may be interested. I've started to write a manual of tips and tricks for Pygmy solo kayak builders. It covers the taping method, so that your boat doesn't have hundreds of holes all over it. I'm on version 2 now. Version 2 covers several other tips and tricks from myself and from others as collected over time. ATTENTION : Use the manual at your own risk! The only person responsible for any mistakes or problems with the building of your boat is you. Always use the official Pygmy manual that came with your kit. Only do those tips and tricks that make sense to you. If something in the manual doesn't sound right to you, then don't do it! Neither I, nor Pygmy Boats, nor anyone else except YOU is responsible for the safety of your boat and the quality of your build. It's in very rough draft form right now, but if you'd like to read it, please send a $10 donat...

Annapolis Wherry Spacered Inwales Installed

For the past week (yes, WEEK!) I have been working on the outwales and spacered inwales. The inwales and outwales are such an obvious part of the boat that you really want them to look as good as you can possibly make them. And doing that takes a lot of time and patience.  The spacered inwale kit is an addition to the basic wherry kit. The kit includes the OUTwales, but does not come with INwales. We like the look of the spacered inwales and find that they have some function too for securing things to the hull. They look nautical.    The spacered inwale kit comes with inwale rails, sticks you cut to make the spacers, a replacement breasthook for the bow, and replacement quarter knees for the transom.  They leave it up to you for how long to cut the spacers and how far apart to space them. The manual that comes with the kit is extensive.  I like the look of rounded spaces. No, it's not the normal look of spacers which are supposed to simulate the ribs on a wooden...

Pinguino Keel Fiberglassed

Here is another step that I do out-of-order from the official Pygmy manual. I lay the heavy fiberglass tape on the keel now, before I fiberglass the entire hull. The manual says to do it afterwards. However it looks much cleaner if you do it beforehand. Structurally there shouldn't be too much difference either way. In the future, if the keel ever needs to be re-taped, you just do what you would do otherwise... sand it a bit to rough it up and then lay down some more tape. No big deal. On the ends you will have better luck if you cut a few tucks in the edges of the tape. See below.  Try to make the tape as straight as you can. By putting it underneath the main fiberglassing it will be much less noticeable, but you'll still probably see it. The excess was simply squeegeed onto the bare wood which is fine and pre-saturates those areas. There is a huge debate on whether you should pre-saturate the panels or if you should just wet out the fiberglass cloth and hav...