9 of 10 boatbuilders prefer Jameson over Bushmills

Okay, here’s the deal. We need to lay three six-inch wide pieces of fiberglass tape along the insides of the chine. Each should be staggered about an inch from the other, so they lap out onto the floor two inches, three inches, and four inches–and up the walls four inches, three inches and two inches respectively. This could end up a big sticky mess, or a three-day project. Or we could…

Mark out the laps on the floor with a very fancy jig. And mark the center of the strips. Because, see, if you start laying them in at one end, they have to distort due to the curve they are going around, and they would be way too tweaked to work way before you got to the far end. So you have to start laying them down in the middle and work outwards.

That’s where the Jameson comes in. These are empty bottles, but it would work with full ones. If the lids were on tight.

Lay out sixteen feet of heavy plastic. Lay some markers down underneath it so you know where the ends and center of your glass strips will be. Measure out six strips of glass and mark the center line on each. Roll all but one up and set them aside.

Glove up. Mix up some goo. Squeegee the first strip of glass full of resin. Then take the whiskey bottles and roll the strip up starting at each end and rolling to the center line. Here’s where you run into problems with Bushmills. The bottles are square and roll very poorly. Wine works, however.

Carry each strip over to the boat and start unrolling, dropping the glass exactly on your center line and following each lap layer out to the end, smoothing it in as you go, working out the bubbles and massaging the increasingly angular stretch of the glass into place.

If you are careful you can drop each of the three laps exactly on the center. Like I did here. (The other side was close but not this nice.)

Bingo. Done. Might as well do the bow and transom layups while we’re at it..

Then–and this is very important–begin emptying two more Jameson bottles for the exterior chines, as the ones used tonight are all sticky and covered with fiberglass strands. It really helps take the edge off.

No Comments

Anonymous February 6, 2013 at 8:05 pm - Reply

You or your helpers don’t use chemical masks to do your glass work, whats up with that and what does the MSDS (material safety data sheet) say? Just wondering, Deano
brdfrd February 7, 2013 at 4:06 am - Reply

Guilty. The MSDS says to avoid breathing the fumes… but… the newer epoxies are super-low on VOCs. We are pretty fastidious about masking up when sanding and grinding the stuff, and use vinegar for clean up instead of the evil acetone. But as far as resin work… the old polyester resins were entirely evil and toxic. The earlier epoxies, like WEST were a lot better, and a lot of shops still use that stuff, for better or worse, unmasked. The newer stuff like Resin Research is a whole 'nother generation of low toxicity. Yes, if you were working in a tiny enclosed space for extended periods, you really ought to mask up, and that's why the MSDS still has to say don't sniff it. But in our application, it's still pretty safe. Here is my resin chemist (who has worked with this stuff for forty years with hardly any brain damage) at work in my shop:
http://fretwaterlines.blogspot.com/2012/01/firm-sexy-black-bottoms.html
Anyhow, thanks for the shout out, Deano, and thanks for looking after your pards. But I think this is okay. If we were using WEST fast-kick–maybe not. If we were using polyester, we should be shot.