Sheeting with ply
First was to get the ply. I used 3.6mm exterior grade BC ply. A lot cheaper than marine, uses the same glue within the ply and is only $25 a sheet.
There is so much surface area to cover here so I chose to vacuum bag again. I placed the ply in the correct spots and marked underneath the outline of the hull then trimed each peice to only have 10mm excess over the sides.
Once again due to the heat here in Darwin I sheeted in 2 separate runs. Firstly the rear then the front. I mixed 600 grams of epoxy at a time and spread over all surfaces which took a while due to the surface area. Then the sheets were aligned and several screws and peices of timber were used to hold in place to ensure the centre join was flat.
As quickly as I could I setup the bag, turned on the vaccum and within a minute my scale was showing 70kg...Good! I found several heavy objects to help hold it all down. Now comes the problem.....
I used eskys as weights but had to fill up with water. I turned the tap on, went and got a beer and forgot about the hose. I realised after about 5 minutes and there was water everywhere!! As you can't perfectly seal the bag water got inside everywhere. The vacuum pulled 10l of water out even after all surface water was removed. I couldn't turn back at this stage so I had to let it go and see what happened once the epoxy cured.
After about 5 hours the glue in the pot was rock hard so I took the bag apart and LUCKILY everything looked great!
Plenty of time left in the day so I got the other half ready to sheet and put it in the vacuum bag.
This time I did not forget the hose!
Due to the curve up in the hull I cut some slits into the ply to help with the curve. Problem was due to the sharp curve the ply more towards the top surface did not pull down enough so when I walked on it I could feel it move. To fix this I drilled holes into the ply where I felt the ply move and filled it with epoxy, this worked great!
All sheeted now
There is so much surface area to cover here so I chose to vacuum bag again. I placed the ply in the correct spots and marked underneath the outline of the hull then trimed each peice to only have 10mm excess over the sides.
Once again due to the heat here in Darwin I sheeted in 2 separate runs. Firstly the rear then the front. I mixed 600 grams of epoxy at a time and spread over all surfaces which took a while due to the surface area. Then the sheets were aligned and several screws and peices of timber were used to hold in place to ensure the centre join was flat.
As quickly as I could I setup the bag, turned on the vaccum and within a minute my scale was showing 70kg...Good! I found several heavy objects to help hold it all down. Now comes the problem.....
I used eskys as weights but had to fill up with water. I turned the tap on, went and got a beer and forgot about the hose. I realised after about 5 minutes and there was water everywhere!! As you can't perfectly seal the bag water got inside everywhere. The vacuum pulled 10l of water out even after all surface water was removed. I couldn't turn back at this stage so I had to let it go and see what happened once the epoxy cured.
After about 5 hours the glue in the pot was rock hard so I took the bag apart and LUCKILY everything looked great!
Plenty of time left in the day so I got the other half ready to sheet and put it in the vacuum bag.
This time I did not forget the hose!
Due to the curve up in the hull I cut some slits into the ply to help with the curve. Problem was due to the sharp curve the ply more towards the top surface did not pull down enough so when I walked on it I could feel it move. To fix this I drilled holes into the ply where I felt the ply move and filled it with epoxy, this worked great!
All sheeted now
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