Commander 147

[Commander 147]

One of the best parts of having this forum is that it offers us the chance to bounce ideas off each other. Many times other people will bring up points you have not considered. That seems to be the situation here.

When I use 1708 biax my procedure has been to wet out the area I want to apply the mat to then wet out the mat on both sides working the epoxy into the mat on a flat surface. Then I pick up the saturated mat and apply it to the surface I'm woking on rolling out any bubbles.

Now here comes the part (being honest) that I had not considered. I have not had any problem with the mat sticking to a verticle surface when I applied it. So I had not considered that it would not stick to the bottom side of the deck. And your point seems to be a valid concern.

Being a bit hard headed once I have committed towards a course of action and since you say you have never actually tried it yourself, I think I'm going to try a section in the bow in the chain locker area. If I have to grind it back out in there and do something else it does not matter as much if it is not as attractive of a finish.

The side of the hull and to a much lesser extent the bottom of the deck both have a lot of bumps and hollows in the glass work. I had already assumed I would fair those areas out with thicked epoxy before I apply the mat. I wanted a nice smooth surface to make it easier for the mat to stick to it without bubbles and hollow spots.

BTW Ebb, you will be happy to hear that I am no longer using West System epoxy. I found Raka non-blushing epoxy which seems like it wets out better also. Certainly a lot cheaper and it has a good reputation on the plastic classic forum. The other thing that has been mentioned about this epoxy is that is seems to cause less reactions for people like me who are sensitive to it.

As far as the toe rail goes... my thought pattern went something like this. It is my hope that someday one of my grandchildren will take up sailing and then ownership and care of Destiny. As a matter of fact that is one of the things that drew me to the commander. I wanted a large enough cockpit so I could take my family sailing and we would all be able to sit in the cockpit comfortably. So I wanted something that would never be a problem down the road. And since the rubrail is screwed into this area it was conceivable to me that over time water could get in there and cause the wood to rot if I put wood up in there. Granted it would take a very long time and likely not occur in my lifetime but possibly in my granchildren's. So I wanted somthing water would not affect. I talked to the folks at Fiberglass Coatings in St. Pete and we came up with a polyester putty that they developed called FC8 that is thickened with microfibers and silica that would fill the toe rail area. I'm not asking it to do anything structural I'm only asking it to fill a void that will be enclosed with epoxy wet out fiberglass. For $90.00 I got a 5 gal bucket of the stuff that should be enough to do the toe rail. Then not being one to just take some salesman's word for anything I mixed up a pint of the putty and put it on a piece of plastic that would allow me to get it off in one piece. I wanted to see how strong the stuff was. The putty was about 1/2" thick and when I tried to break it I could not do it until I supported the two ends and took a hammer to it. Then when it did break it broke cleanly into 3 pieces and did not just shatter. Take a look at the pictures below.

Here is a link to the website.

http://www.fgci.com/