Cutting Panels & Glassing

Laying out the side panels and cutting them with a utility knife. After tracing each panel on the Core Cell, I used a 20' batten to check the sheer and chine fair.  And quickly came to the conclusion Andy's eye and hand were good enough, so proceeded to just trace the rest.

Bottom panels were lined and cut the same way. Core Cell 3/8" for the sides and 1/2" for the bottom.

Mistake #2 - I was supposed to leave the bottom panel uncut and attach the entire sheet to the side panels, using the extra material for additional alignment and support for tack filleting. The instructions very clearly say this. Guess I should have read them one more time. 

Anyway, pressing on. Side (and bottom) panels glassed with 10 oz. E Glass on the inside, to provide some support and stiffness when attaching sides to stem post and bottom.

With Resin Research epoxy. Man this stuff is great. Easy to use and absolutely no smell. They've come a long way from my early kayak days when we had to build our own boats out of the Ledyard Club's Lettmann Mk IV mold and reeked of polyester resin for days. 

I'm using both the slow and fast hardener, depending on my comfort level with the size of the glassing (working by myself) and the temp in my garage. 

Greg Loehr, owner of Resin Research, has been a big help with resin and layup questions on the phone and by email. 

After trying to use my cell phone as a calculator, and realizing there was no way to keep the resin off the phone, and then failing miserably calculating the numbers up in my head, I created this resin:hardener cheat spreadsheet. I usually just add hardener up to the total amount.  This helps with my epoxy-addled math.