Sides fibreglassed

Managed to get both sides fibreglassed over a few days.  Prep required standing on the top and unrolling the mat so that I could cut to length.  The sheet is a bit over 1200mm wide, it is 450 gsm biaxial  which you drape down the sides, and overlap up onto the bottom over the tape along the side/bottom join.

Below is a photo of cutting one piece to length, I marked vertically with pencil on the hull so I knew where to put the epoxy prior to fitting.

The first day I did all the full sheets on one side, but I only had a very narrow roller so putting on epoxy was like painting a house with a one inch brush.

A quick trip for some throw away big rollers and I was in business.  I cut the sheets for the other side and the ones for front and back which I left on the first day.  Those ones were put on oversize and then trimmed once placed on but before fully wet out.

First step is to apply epoxy to the area to be covered:

Then carefully position the sheet, and apply more epoxy towards the edges ensuring there were no creases.  This thing took a LOT of epoxy to wet out the sheets.  I found putting a thick layer on the wood helped hold the mat in place, but you had to get it in position well before you pressed it on with your gloved hands.  You will see on some of the side shots that there are gaps between the edges, some bigger than others.  Due to the shape I decided just to get the edges as close as I could without overlapping them as this would then have to be sanded down.  I figure it will have two more layers of epoxy, then extra layers when I fair it so those little spaces will be well protected.

End results:

From the side, the front is the one you can see me putting epoxy on in the above photo.

Other side front:

Same side looking towards the transom:

And a front on shot.  Still have the bottom to glass:

As I said, glass the bottom, then it is time to put on a few coats of epoxy.  After that comes a couple of coats with light filler and sanding until my arms fall off.