Finished installing chainplates

Categories: Floats

The laminating job from yesterday was just about all the way cured when we measured the chainplate location and marked where they needed to go.

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Since the laminate for these are supposed to lap up the deck-flange, I decided to put some tape over the hole in the hopes of not making too much of a mess forming a fillet against the deck flange and then laminating it.

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Then bedded in place with a mixture of epoxy and cabosil and formed a massive fillet for the fiberglass to adhere to

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Cut out the cloth needed for both floats

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and laminated into place

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I tried a different technique today that I read about a while back. Working with cloth on the bias like this causes real problems when trying to squeeze out excess epoxy as the fibers will “walk” very badly, especially near the corners where not much is there. This time, I took the cloth and sandwiched them (with epoxy) between two layers of bagging film and ran the spreader over it back and forth. This distributed the epoxy and wet out the fabric without distorting the fibers. I then brushed some epoxy onto the area where it was going, peeled the plastic off and placed the fabric. After that it was just a matter of rubbing out the air bubbles.

Time spent : 2 hours