How to epoxy fiberglass over hull and floorboard

[Dmksails]

I've done my first bit of glassing, working on the small bow area first. It came out alright, but I had alot of problem with the glass pulling when I wetting down the glass against the bulkhead.

Question - is there a trick to wetting out the glass between a bulkhead and the hull without having it pull up off the fillet?

Here is what I tried -

Foam Roller. This was terrible as it tended to grab the fiberglass and push it around

Plastic spreader. This worked ok, but I had trouble making the transition over the fillet. Tended to pull it up as I scrapped epoxy out to the edge.

Brush: Worked ok when I used it to dab epoxy into place but needed spreader to even it out.

Suggestions?

[dbeck]

We used brush only when glassing into still 'wet' fillets. Using a plastic spreader or foam roller both have pros and cons. In the end we preferred the roller, but we used the ones for very fine surface. Patience is important.

What I did a lot is to epoxy the bare plywood PRIOR glassing and then put the glass immediately onto the 'wet' surface. Then, the glass sticks to the wood and can still be adjusted slightly. Moreover I found it much easier to saturate the glass.

[Dmksails]

I did 2 sections today. The first was a pain, but I finally got it down with no air pockets. The second was a disaster - ended up pulling up the glass before it set into a sanding nightmare.

Tomorrow I will try again and this time do as dbeck suggests are wet down the plywood first.

[Pasi in Finland]

I believe after many tries I settled with the foam roller. Brush was a disaster and it seemed with a light touch the roller disturbed the cloth the least. Dietrich's idea of wetting the plywood before cloth placement could be a good idea, but I preferred placing the cloth, cutting the corner relief's and making sure it sits nicely in inside corners before glassing. Doing all of that with the epoxy already spread didn't sound good at least at the time.

Some people tape the vertical sections before wetting. I tried but found this out to be a bad idea as the tape tends to pull on the cloth and pull the inside corner. If you stroke the fiberglass with a cotton glove it will load a lot of static and stick to vertical surfaces with amazing strength.

Pasi