Jo and I spent about 2 hours cleaning up yesterday, so the boat and the surrounds are now clean again, all of the sawdust I put down to mop up spilt hardener is picked up, all of the offcuts put away or thrown away and most of the dust vacuumed up. There was also quite a bit of balsa sawdust in the boat from inside the bulkhead rout out. In the process of cleaning up I rolled up the plastic sheeting that I had on the workbench to wet out the uni ropes. On Sunday I turned the plastic sheet over because the wet out from Saturday had left the resin on the plastic too tacky (sticky) to put the next dry uni on and get it off without it sticking too much. I thought it was too dry to stick to the bench. I was wrong! When I tried to remove the plastic sheet, it came away from the thin layer of resin that was stuck here and there to the mdf workbench top. Stuck down enough that I am going to have to sand off the resin I couldn’t get off with a scraper, or I should say Jo couldn’t get off with a scraper. No real harm done, another of my boneheaded goof ups and just added a bit of work to our clean up!

I have the forebeam on the workbench, still on its cradle for now, so that I can prepare it for final gluing and glassing. I have to sand back all of the uneven glue and fill all the gaps that are not full of glue ready for glassing. After I glue the 2 halves together, there will be another quick sand to remove any glue dags then I will lay down a layer of uni both sides, perhaps in one piece all around it, then repeat the process with a layer of double bias.

But before any of that I have to glue the U bolts that will be the anchor bridle points into the beam, in such a way that they can hold the full weight of the boat pulling on them. I will probably build a web out of ply and uni glass and glue in a stainless steel strap that the bolts will go through and the nuts on the other side, then fill the webs with resin. I will build that on the weekend, before gluing the 2 halves together.