Coaming in pieces

I decided to do the glue-up of the coaming in two stages, partly to make it easier to handle, and partly so that I could clean up the outer edges of the spacers. First, I clamped them in place and marked the cockpit hole, and cut it out fairly close (+1/4 inch) to the actual size to make clamping easier. Next I slathered the spacers with thickened epoxy and clamped them in place with a layer of wax paper under them so they wouldn't stick to the deck. The result: two spacers, formed to fit the curve of the deck. The picture shows them with the outer edges sanded.

Gluing the coaming assembly to the deck was a bit fiddly. It took a lot of clamps.

I found it was easiest to start by clamping the assembly firmly at the aft centerline, adding clamps going forward. Cockpit = lamprey.

By the way, you know how it's a herd of buffalo, a murder of crows, a gaggle of geese, a shrewdness of apes (really), a pod of whales, a shiver of sharks (no, really), a parliament of owls, a troubling of goldfish (really, I'm not kidding), and so forth? I'd like to suggest a grasp of lamprey.

And when dey was no crawdads, we et sand..

I wet out the deck with as little epoxy as I could to save weight. The first coat went on with a bondo spreader, and I used just enough to wet out the cloth completely, scraping all of the excess off. The second and third coats went on with a foam roller - very thin coats, just enough to fill the weave of the cloth, with an overnight cure between first and second coats, and about 4 hours between second and third coats.

After 24 hours of curing, I began sanding the deck. I started with 100 grit and knocked the high spots off, being careful not to sand the edges along the chines of the boat. It's incredibly easy to sand right through the glass and into the wood whenever there's a sharp curve or edge. Best to sand those spots by hand or with the sander on lowest speed. After the 100 grit, I moved to 150 grit, then 220 grit. Yep, it's skipping grit, but I ain't building a piano. Also, I plan to install rubrails, which means I don't have to be overly fastidious about the round-over at the chine. I hit that enough to remove the high spots to make sure the rubrail will draw up tight.  All told, it took me no more than about an hour to sand the deck in its entirety (probably less, because whenever you're sanding, one minute feels like five). Next, coaming and hatches.

Glass on deck

It rained buckets yesterday so I decided not to glass the deck, thinking the excess humidity might fog the epoxy, which I didn't want because I'm gonna finish the deck bright. This morning, however, was blue skies. Here, I've got the glass laid on the deck (one 16 foot piece of 27" glass - 3.6 oz), and the edge cut so that there's a one inch overlap down the hulls. I also applied masking tape just below the rub-rail line, sticking only the top edge to the hull, with the bottom edge flared outward a bit. This is a surfboard glasser's trick - any epoxy resin that runs over the edge will run down the tape and drip on the ground instead of down the hull. Makes for no drips or runs, which keeps me from having to sand the runs away after the resin cures.

I used a light misting of 3M 45 spray adhesive along the edges just to keep the glass in place. I find that the adhesive makes the job a lot easier: the glass doesn't shift around or float. It just stays right where you put it. This was necessary today especially. It was very windy and the glass was getting blown around a bit.