I had a short day today so I could spend more time with Jo on my birthday. But I did get done what I had set out to do, glass the inside of the first dagger case half and to kerf and round (with a router) the rest of the pieces for the rest of the halves.

I glassed the inside of the first half by first removing all of the screws except for one at each corner to continue to hold the half firmly in place in the mold and giving the inside a quick sand to remove glue overflows mostly around the mdf tabs that were holding the duracore in the mold. The glue was still a little green and clogged the sand paper quickly but the upside is I will get a chemical bond of the glass resin to it.

I laid out the glass and cut it to size, using Schionning’s recommendation of 3 pieces of glass, with the back piece and front piece overlapping in the rope slot then another 50mm strip down the middle of the rope slot to cover the joins. This method is recommended because you have to get the glass over 2 corners and 2 coves and having 2 coves so close the tendency is for any adjustment on one cove may disturb the glass on the other and it can become very frustrating very fast so 2 separate pieces of glass solves this issue. I then created the coves in the rope slot so the glass goes on in the slot properly and wet on wet. Using left over coving material I filled the screw holes and some grooves created where glue had sunk in the slots by a half a mm.

I then started the wet out of the larger back piece of glass. Once it was completely wet out I rolled the front piece (a 200mm tape) out on the wet back piece of glass and wet it out on the wet glass in this way absorbing some of the resin from the piece already down, then once it was wet I rolled it up and rolled it out on the front section. I then repeated this with the 50mm rope slot tape and lay that in the slot. Then using a fine detail roller I made sure to get all of the air bubbles and excess resin out from under the glass to ensure a proper contact of the glass to the pine veneer and in the coves and around the rounded edges.

The the fun started. I decided I would peel ply the wet glass. I wanted the rope slot peel plied then once I had a piece in the slot and over the coves and rounds I placed a peel ply layer over the front curved section then a piece over the almost flat (the curve is very gradual) rear piece. The fun with peel ply is getting bubbles out. It is very frustrating, no sooner do you get an annoying bubble out of one area it creates a lift or bubble somewhere else and you end up pushing bubbles around for a few minutes. In the end I made sure that the rope slot and coves and curves were well covered and the front curve also pretty well covered and didn’t worry too much about the few bubbles I still had. The back sections also has a few bubbles here and there but again I am not too worried. The bubbles are definitely only in the peel ply not under the glass.

Once I had finished the glassing and peel ply I finished up by cutting the rest of the kerfs in the duracore panels I had already cut to size, and then rounded the corners with the router of the curved sections of the panels that will need rounded corners (as well as coves) for the glass to go over. I now have all of the parts cut, kerfed and routered ready to make the next case half.

So only 4 hours today but enough done that I couldn’t have done anything else on the daggers or cases anyway. With any luck, I only have one more birthday spent boat building to go and that the birthday after next (my 48th) will be spent on the boat.