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Its Fiberglassing Time!

Posted on October 10, 2020October 9, 2020 By Mike No Comments on Its Fiberglassing Time!
Informational, Kayak Building, Sabalo 12 MK1

First time fiberglassing. There seemed to be two methods. The CLC method of doing sections at a time and Nick Schade’s method of saturating the fiberglass everywhere and coming back to squeeze out the excess.

I had estimated this step would take a bit over an hour based in Nick Schade’s video.

Well, the Sabalo is a lot harder to glass than whats in the videos. For example the Shearwater in the CLC video is a single chine kayak. Its very easy to squeegee out the epoxy. Similarly the Boot Legger in Nicks video are strip kayaks with a smooth hull. Both of these hulls pretty much end in a 90 degree.

You can barely see Panel A in this photo, see how it dissappears? Thats because its going back in towards the cockpit. That means all your epoxy wants to drip at the chine between panel A/B.

The Sabalo when upside down has an inverse incline. Meaning your going beyond 90 degrees. It means a lot of epoxy wants to drip off before getting to panel A. Panel A was a pain to Epoxy.

The Sabalo also is multi-chined. Every one of those chines is actually a bit difficult to drag your squeegee over and not leave a streak.

Got it all saturated. Looks amazing. Super excited

Another important tip. Support your kayak much farther away from the plastic sheets covering your table than I did. The fiberglass and epoxy wants to stick to the plastic sheets, and than if the sheets move it pulls the fiberglass away from the wood.

There’s a few spots along the edge of panel A where the fiberglass pulled off and didn’t bond well. I think that’ll be ok as there will be fiberglass tape when the deck parts are bonded on.

I also need to add a 6oz strip at the bow, and the stern was not done either.

Another note, the fiberglass role I had barely covered the width of the Sabalo. So turning it on a 45 degree did not seem possible. I’ll have to think about this one a bit. Maybe I was just too nervous to get it right.

The Raka epoxy was easy to put on and is really thin. 4 coats seems to be what it will need. I’m 3 in as of writing this and there’s just a few spots where a bit of weave is showing. The garage is really dusty despite my best efforts to clean it.

Also for the fill coats, the method of pouring, using a roller to spread and than tipping with a brush seemed to work best for me. Brushing on seemed to take forever and I was getting runs and having trouble brushing on the correct amount of epoxy, and again that Panel A was really hard to reach.

Tags: diy kayak Fiberglass jem watercraft raka epoxy sabalo 12 sit on top kayak build

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