Glass bottom boat

Here's the boat with the fiberglass draped over and ready for epoxy. The plans called for 6 oz glass, but I bought 5.6 oz instead because that's what was available. I'm sure the strength difference isn't going to be noticeable, nor will the weight savings either. Notice Stanley, the project foreman, checking to see that I'm complying with all safety regulations. He's inspecting the sawhorses to make sure they're strong enough. 

It was a bit fiddly to get the glass to lay down along the bow properly, so I cut it with a razor and a straightedge, overlapped it around the bow by a half inch on either side, and then stuck it in place with 3M 45 spray adhesive. (Similar at the stern). I then worked the glass over the hull with a bondo spreader, hitting it here and there with the spray adhesive to hold it in place and make sure it wasn't gonna float when I applied the epoxy. Probably completely unnecessary, but it did make wetting out the cloth easier. No big bubbles, and it allowed me to use a minimum amount of epoxy.

Here's what it looks like with one coat of epoxy. It required about 10 ounces of epoxy to wet out the whole boat (or perhaps 14 - I can't recall how much epoxy I mixed). I was pretty careful not to use any extra  - just the minimum amount required to make the cloth go from white to clear. (In the picture, it looks like some places are still white, but that's just the glare - the glass was completely saturated). The procedure was easy enough, and it took about 20 minutes or so to do the whole boat. I poured a couple of ounces on the middle of the hull and worked it with a bondo spreader toward the edges then down the sides, and then repeated until the whole thing was done. I wound up with a bit of epoxy left over, so I mixed it with wood flour until it was thick, then applied it to the inner bow. I've been doing this every time I have a bit of resin left over - i just thicken whatever's left and smash it into the inside of the bow - and it's building up quite nicely in there, which will save some resin when it comes time to do the end-pour.

By the way, I'm using the West System pumps on my Resin Research epoxy with the volume limiter installed on the hardener side, so one pump of each delivers about 3 ounces of the correct 2/1 ratio of resin/hardener. I'm very pleased with the Resin Research product. It hardens in a reasonable time, and it's blushless, which means it doesn't form water molecules as a by-product of the reaction and so it's very clear. As you can see, I've used about 3/4 of a gallon of my 3 gallon kit so far. At this rate, I may well have enough left over for Crescent to build her boat.