Hello again. Haven't been here for a while as I was extremely jealous that some were sailing while I was shoveling snow!
Anywho, getting ready for the upcoming season and need to repair a leak in my Nacra 5.0. The crack appears to be on the extreme bottom, and looks like a split where the sides of the hull meet. The entire bottom is a bit worn, and so I figured instead of repairing a spot here and there I would do the entire bottom.
My experience with fiberglass was about a week of instruction in an aviation maintenance class about 10 years ago. I have the general idea, using three'ish layers of fiberglass tape, each layer increasing in width, but am wondering how doing the entire bottom would change the procedure.
Should I do one long strip? Should I cut them up and do a 3 foot section at a time? Should I use a very slow hardening epoxy mix? Can I do one layer, let it dry, and then do a second? Or do I have to do all layers at once before they dry?
I tried doing a search but I probably wasn't using the right combo of search words.
Thanks ahead of time for the help.
The Nacra is upside down, taped off, ready for some lovin.
(kinky)
Do long one-piece strips down the hull. If doing it with temperatures above 75 degrees F, I would use 206 slow hardener (presuming you are using West Systems). If under 75 degrees F, the fast hardener will give you plenty of working time to wet down one full strip down the hull, apply the 2nd on top, wet down, apply the 3rd, and wet again. The idea is to get each layer down before the layer under it gets too far into the gel stage so the amine blush (the resin by-product of the curing process) can continue to rise through each layer ending at the outer surface and not between each surface where it can affect the bond. You can apply each layer to a wet layer with no problem. In all reality, though, wetting out each strip down the entire hull should go very quickly and cure time should not be much of a concern. Also note that direct sunlight will warm the resin a lot causing the cure to happen much more quickly.
I would also consider purchasing the fiberglass in a tape form...available from
www.fiberglasssupply.com or
www.uscomposites.com. You can get different widths that have knitted edges so you don't have to wrestle with all the loose fiberglass strings that invariably get all over everything...it's a neat convenient way to go.
