Glassing the Hull

Take a deep breath. This is easily a 3-4 hour job. After cut the cloth to length and drape it over the inverted hull, it drapes just like the instructions say. The bow drapes smoothly (after several passes of hand rubbing to pull the weave down and forward) and the stern is a wrinkle.

I deviated from the instructions on the stern. It seemed to me that you could cut the cloth in a way that would allow about 3" of overlap on each side. This required glassing one side and then glassing that piece's overlapping edge around the stern and onto the hull on the other side. Then the opposite side was glassed and it's overlapping piece glassed over the top of the other overlap and around to the first side. The key here was to make sure the first overlap was wet and tight to the hull, because there is significant moving of the cloth to get it wrinkle free and you don't want the underneath piece to move.

You can't avoid a little bald spot at the point where the stern curn makes its sharpest inflection from the bottom of the hull to the actual stern. As a matter of fact, if you elect to overlap the cloth at the stern, you will most likely have to cut the wet cloth a little higher than you estimated when it was dry, putting the bald spot a little further along the keel. But the bald spot trims out nicely with the scraper (and very little sanding) and will later be covered with the sacrificial tape along the keel.

When the glassing is finished, you can barely see the overlap at the stern (it's just an inch inside the dotted line). Don't wait too long to cut the draped cloth from the edge of the hull. It comes of nicely with a razor blade after about 10 hours. It's a real pain after 20 hours.