Need advice about glassing in floor/sole

Kracker Jack

Kracker Jack

God
What kind of cloth should I use on my v20 floor. Im replacing the whole floor with 3/4 plywood. 2 layers of 1708? 3 layers of 10 oz. cloth? any other ideas? Thanks guys
 
54 oz of fabric seems a little extreme. You do want it to float afterwards? That would be great for the hull. Just kidding around. With 3/4" plywood for the floor you really only need to encapsulate to make it water proof on the backside. The floor of my V was 1/2" squares of plywood glassed in place with a choppergun from the backside of the liner. The equivalent to 5 oz fabric at the most and saturated with resin. The plywood doesn't have to span very far from stringer to stringer and the floor will be attached at the sides. I would feel comfortable with 1.5 oz. CSM and 10 oz fabric on the bottom and one layer of 1708 oz on top. Stringers would get 2 layers of 1708. My .02.
 
RidgeRunner said:
54 oz of fabric seems a little extreme. You do want it to float afterwards? That would be great for the hull. Just kidding around. With 3/4" plywood for the floor you really only need to encapsulate to make it water proof on the backside. The floor of my V was 1/2" squares of plywood glassed in place with a choppergun from the backside of the liner. The equivalent to 5 oz fabric at the most and saturated with resin. The plywood doesn't have to span very far from stringer to stringer and the floor will be attached at the sides. I would feel comfortable with 1.5 oz. CSM and 10 oz fabric on the bottom and one layer of 1708 oz on top. Stringers would get 2 layers of 1708. My .02.
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Having spent time on Ridge's V and walked all over it, stem to stern several times...I'd go w/that...
 
That is a smarter layup than my boat reel. All I used on the floor was 1/2" Coosa, 2 layers of 1.5oz CSM to glue the Coosa to the original glass (liner out of the boat and upside down on a jig) touch sanded then 24 oz woven roving into two layers of CSM. I wish I had used 1208 or 1708 back then. Simpler, cheaper and stronger because it requires a lot less resin. Mine is doing well but I readily admit the use of CSM leads to a resin rich (inferior) finished product
 
One more question for you guys. And I kinda know the answer, But can you tie new resin and cloth into roughed up gelcoat? some say no and some say yes you can.
 
You want to grind down the gelcoat to get to the glass underneath. This does a couple of things. First, its a better surface for the resin to adhere to. Second, it creates a bevel so when the new glass is laid it is a similar height rather than having a hump that creates a ton of work in fairing.
 
Get as much gelcoat ground down as you can. A fleck here and there isn't gonna kill you. You need a strong mechanical bond when attaching new glass to cured glass, mechanical bond is about all there is with PE or VE. 40grit and leave ridges to give the glass something to hold onto. If you let the new glass cure, you have to grind it rough again to apply subsequent layers. To save on grinding, do wet on wet application whenever possible.
If you had 1708 coming out the wazoo you could use it for both sides of the plywood and step back to 5/8" or 1/2" plywood. You having fun yet?
AND We want to see some pictures.:sun:
 
I'm having a blast with this boat. My girlfriend picked out the color (fighting lady yellow). I figured I would include her in on something. I'm learning to wet on wet as much as possible. I want to thank everyone for there help so far. My tramsom is ready to go in this weekend everything is prepped and cut out and ready to go all I need to do is go buy my cabosil tomorrow.
 
Spare poited out a method of using a router to remove gel coat...w/a 3/4" or better bit, and that bit dropped 3 layers of masking tape(to match the depth of the gel coat), it'll take it off quick...obviously needs to be a flat enough surface to accomodate the router shoe...haven't tried it, but sounds good...Spare said worked very well...
 
Yea im to close to the edge of the boat to use that method. Thats an awesome idea. I started doing some repair on my console lastnight, like filling in some holes from the old gauges. Im only gonna have an RPM gauge on the new console configuration I dont need all those other gauges cluttering up the console. Im gonna be posting pictures in a couple days documenting my transom install I will put those on my build thread.
 
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