Whilst I spent half the day at the warehouse today unfortunately work (on the computer) got in the way so I only spent an hour or so working on the boat. I actually got everything ready to wet out the first uni rope and I still had an hour or so but I decided I did not want to rush the first one, even thought it doesn’t look like a difficult job. Also it was a warm day and the shed was warm and then it poured with rain so I figured that the heat and humidity may lead to amine blush (and short open time on the resin) and that tomorrow is going to be cooler all day, more conducive to wetting out large amounts of glass.

I have also looked at various ways other builders have capped or pressed the uni into the troughs and I figure I have probably made my troughs a bit deeper than they need to be. I can easily put 600mm of uni rolled into a rope in the trough so that it does not protrude, but having said that, I have only tried it dry, but I don’t think wet resin is going to make that much difference. So if i am correct all I have to do is ensure that the rope does not protrude higher than the glass sides to the trough and back fill once it is in and cap it so that it sets nice an full to form a filled edge.

So to cap the trough I have put clear packing tape on 3mm mdf and cut 30mm strips using the power saw with a fence on and these strips will cover the 25mm troughs and are super flexible to follow the curves of the trough tops and to pull it down hard against the edge I will just put a screw through the panel about 100mm below the trough and run an elastic band over the top from one side of the screw to the other at about 200mm spaces, more in the curves to keep the strip pulled down tight.

So I think I might have a go at one of them tomorrow and if it proves as easy as it looks I might get more than one done. But in the past jobs that looked difficult turned out easy so I may be fooled on this one because in the manual Brett says that it is not a pleasant job but so far I don’t see it. Lets see what my tone is like tomorrow!