So here is the deal with fiberglassing, if you're a klutz-rookie like me. First, you have get the cloth smooth. It's flexible, so once you drape it over the intended area, it will get smooth if you gently smooth it. It seems to respond to the warmth of the human hand -- or perhaps other hand species, as well, but I just have the human ones to experiment with.
Still, I had to make myself go slowly, gently stretching and pulling and smoothing and smoothing some more and then going the other direction and then coming back over here to the other side and ... well, it went on for a while. The longer I worked at it, the smoother it got. But it took a long time and I kept wanting to say "There, done!" But it wasn't done. I kept going back and finding one more area to smooth, and that would make another area beg for additional smoothing, and so it went on.
At the end, the cloth hugged the hull like a little black dress hugs, oh, never mind, this is a family blog. But not quite -- it was like a little black dress that had been in someone's suitcase for a couple of weeks, with noticeable creases.
Were these creases going to be a problem? I didn't know. I surely didn't want to haul the swatch of fiberglass up to the guest room, where the ironing board and iron live, and try to get them out. Surely I would find out later that if you iron fiberglass, it becomes resistant to epoxy and attracts icebergs. So I didn't do that. I just went ahead and spread the epoxy on.
Yeah, so the wrinkles disappeared. Whew.
Here is another thing about the fiberglass. After I squeegied on the epoxy, the edges wanted to curl up, or pull up, possibly because of the extra material hanging off the edge of the epoxied areas. I pushed 'em down ... the pulled back up. Huh.
I cut most of the extra 'glass cloth off, leaving just an inch or so of excess, so as to reduce any unwanted pulling. It helped a little, but not much.
What did seem to help the most was patience. After awhile, the epoxy began to cure, and firm up, and gel, and do all those other things epoxy does when it cures. It became tackier, much like a little black dress that's either too low-cut or too short, or, with luck, both. In this case, however, the tackiness had its benefits, because when I pushed the edges back down onto the yearning plywood, it stuck.
And the edges came out okay. And the wrinkles were gone. And a few areas seemed a little heavy on epoxy, but not enough to cause a problem.The fabric's weave is still prominent, the way it's supposed to be.
The reason it's taken me awhile to relate all of this to you is that my copywriting life -- the one that pays the bills around here -- has been hellishly busy. No complaints, fortunate to have the work, yada yada yada, but it's been busy. If things keep going this way I might actually have enough money to buy the sailing components kit for this boat. We'll see.
