The second daggerboard had a layer of glass on one side done on the bench while the trailing edge was hot glued to it (on the the first dagger I did the glassing on the dagger hung on axles between 2 drums) so today I released the dagger from the bench and cleaned off any hot glue stuck to the trailing edge, it just peels off, and I glassed uni onto the other side of the board, this time on the axle between the drums. I will do the rest of the glassing on this dagger this way. Because I did the first glass side on the bench it did not wrap around and do the other side, so these first layers are not 1 continuous sheet around the leading edge. The next layer will be.
The glassing starts with filling the spine trough with glue and any other holes, scratches (foam is quite fragile) dents or other marks and finishing with a tight wipe using the wide trowel flat edge. Then you need to give this an hour or 2 to harden off a little so whilst it was tacking off I released the first dagger case half from the mold and glued in the second one. This was a lot easier now that I have done one, and I was finished in about an hour.
As I had already cut the glass to size I carefully laid it out on the dagger even though the glue was still soft (especially in the trough). Because the glue is tacky the glass sticks to it so you have to be quite accurate in where you initially lay the glass because moving it is a bit more difficult. I was pretty close, I rolled it down the length of the board so only had to ensure it rolled straight and tightly so there was no bubbles or creases. Then once it was on the board and pretty stuck in place it was pretty easy to wet it out except that with the cold change and being late evening by now it was getting cold which meant the resin was pretty thick so it took a little longer to spread it out and for it to soak through the glass and also meant that I squeegeed more off than I usually would and had no use for it so it ended up left over in the tub.
I am pretty happy with the hours I managed again this month, second month in a row over 80 hours. If I can keep this up for the next 18 months I will finish the boat next year.
