This is part two of a two part post – Part One is here
With the hull sanded back to the laminate, we needed to prepare the hull for laminating. First thing to do was to mask the painted hull, so we didn’t contaminant the hull any more than we had. The real risk with doing this is you can end up causing impact as you sand and repair by impacting the surrounding area.
Unfortunately we lost the photos of the laminates, and the stages of laminating, so a description will have to suffice. We used two types of Carbon, standard 90 degree carbon weave and Uni Directional carbon. We weren’t able to source Biaxial carbon, so to get the benefits, we cut the weave carbon in different ways.
Firstly “In-line” with the weave lines and the second at 45 degrees to the weave line. In effect we were imitating the biaxial weave. To build up the foam, the first layer was the same size as the foam and was an inline layer. After that each layer is wider than the foam, increasing as each layer goes on.
Next layer was 2.5 cms wider on all sides as than the foam, and was a 45 degree layer. This was followed by a unidirectional layer, a total of 6 cms wide wrapped around the bow, and 6 cms taller than the foam. This ties the top and bottom of the hull back together. This was followed up by a in-line layer 6 cms wider than the foam. Final layer was a wider in-line layer.
Once the laminates are all on the next step is to put a layer of peel ply over the epoxy to act as an absorber for the excess epoxy. To further squeeze any excess epoxy out, we used a combination of parcel tape, wood and clamps.
By carefully cutting and laminating the layers we kept within the paint lines and so minimising any more over reach than strictly required.
The post cure state is visible on the right, the use of the clamps and peel ply means there isn’t a huge amount of additional epoxy left over, so we have minimised the additional weight of the repair. While giving a strengthen bow area. We then sanded the patterned Peel Ply layer off leaving a smooth layer for the filler for the final fairing.
As ever we used AWL Fair filler to fill and fair the repair. Sanding techniques is the same as normal with an X pattern, to make sure we get a good fair bleed into the existing hull.
Having finished the fairing, we primed the hull using AwlGrip 545, as we did for the main hull fairing and again sanded the paint down to remove imperfections. Over a couple of coats we had it looking like there had never been any damage.
Unfortunately that’s where things went a bit wrong. We had the paint aerosolised when we first did the boat. Unfortunately in the intervening time the hardener has failed so we are going to have to respray when it gets warmer….
