Day 27 - It's glassing time!

This was the culmination of several weeks' worth of efforts. Almost all our prep work was done, and besides a few small touch-ups, we planned on glassing our first board today, which is the beginning of the end of this little winter project.

We made sure all our tools were ready, and we spent a bunch of time hanging some blankets and sealing off any openings to the outside and getting the fire cranking that little shed up to about 35°C. Once we double-check everything was ready, we cut the cloth for Drew's gun, and laid everything out.

One small hiccup was that our measuring cans were in 80z intervals, and with a 2-1 mix of resin to hardener, we were having to mix 24oz at once to get it accurate, but we only needed about 15-20 to do one side of the board. We decided on doing the extra, glassing a test piece on our little tester mctester, and then using the extra to go around and install the fin boxes on everyone's board first (except Micah's, who is slacking off and isn't ready yet...). The testing went perfect, and the fin box installs went super smooth, which was a nice payoff after all the time we spent to get the router cuts just right.

Then we started on Drew's board. The process for glassing involves leaving a 2-3" overhang around the board, spreading the resin over the top, and then brushing it onto the "laps", and tucking them underneath. You also paint on your rice paper decals underneath this. Everything seemed to be going smoothly, but about 20 minutes in, we realized it had taken us too long to do the testing and the boxes, and we were running out of active time with the resin. This was making it gel, and not seep into the cloth properly and also making the rails a hassle. In the end, we got the board done, but there were a number of air bubbles and excess resin on this board. We decided to leave it and see how it dries before we figured out how to fix it up.

Attendees: Drew, Justin, Micah, Kat (and guest helper Ben again)