And the beat goes on

Back to work on the tank tops after a day off taking care of Mom...

I realized that I had to glass the outside of the top before I could cut the access hole in. I plan to bevel the ply down from the underside face of the tops at the access holes. That way the access covers will not be sitting in a depression in the tank top that could fill with water and ????

So here is the glass on the top side of the first lid. The area with the greenish tinge is the new glass work, 3 layers of 24 oz. Combo mat. This layer now covers the plywood completely and is bonded to the bottom layer of glass at the edges. The biax tape will cover the rest of the exposed wood when I glass the tops in to the stringers. When completed the plywood will be completely enclosed in fiberglass. Then the fiberglass layer gets a coat of epoxy paint both inside and out. So long as no one drills holes into the glass or drives screws into it the wood should be safe from rot.

I staggered the ends of the 3 layers so I could fair them into the existing glass work. To left is the aft end with only 1 edge to fair.









And to the right is the forward end with the 3 edges exposed. If I had been a little brighter this morning I would have cut the first layer shorter than the 2nd and the 2nd shorter than the 3rd.
I guess I just love grinding...










Got started on the top for the Starboard tank as well. Ran into a little problem in that the builder did not get a good bond between the plywood they did not glass in. It looks like they used a bondo type material to "glue" the plywood to the underside of the fiberglass. I guess there was not enough pressure applied to squeeze the air and excess material out. So I pried the ply off in the few places it did bond, than ground all the bondo off.
I re-bonded the ply with 2 layers of 1.5 oz mat well wetted out. I was able to clamp it with stiffeners in 4 places. Good old C-clamps got all the air and excess resin out. You can see the resin pooling in the few places where there was hole through the plywood.









This is a close up of one edge of the top with the plywood re-bonded to the glass. you can see the bevel on the plywood edge, as well as one of the hardened pool of resin that came through a hole in the plywood. Oh boy more grinding...

One other problem the builder had is the way they performed the plywood coring in the cabin top. The idea was better than the execution. The coring material is cut into small pieces and the individual pieces are than placed on the wet glass. A little gap is left between each piece. The idea is that the gaps will be filled with resin when the top layer of glass is applied over them. Then each piece of core is isolated from the rest which would limit rot to that one piece. As you can see in this close-up they did not manage to get all the spaces filled. They also forgot to tell the crew to use the same thickness of ply everywhere. So the top layer of glass work did not come out very flat... I ground off the obvious bad spots, filled the voids and will ads another layer of biax over the whole thing. 

Here's a shot of my two favorite tools. The 7 " grinder has a 24 grit disk on it. Grinds through wood and bondo pretty fast. Excellent tool for covering the entire boat and surrounding areas with a fine fiberglass dust. I work with two fans running to try to keeps from overheating and to spread the dust a little further. Can't wait for it to cool off.
The 4" grinder has a diamond wheel on it. I have not found anything that cuts fiberglass as easy as a diamond wheel. Cut it like butter, will cut wood core as well. They last a long time too. I have tried carbide tip blades, but the tips come off. This little guy is more more handy too.

Hope to get the rest of this top put together tomorrow and get started on the top for the lower center tank. At least that one does not need to have two pieces glass together to make the length.