#001, Part 3

After much research, preparation, and procrastination, I finally dove into glassing my #001. I spent the greater part of last night squeegeeing, tucking, cutting, grinding, and generally stumbling my way through my first lamination. I learned a few things along the way...

1) Don't forget your notes at home. This led to the first big decision of the night, do I call it a night and retreat home to get my notes and begin another day? Or, do I decide to wing it and (as Obi-Wan would say)..."Trust your feelings". Well, that might work for Luke, but not for me. As a compromise, I called up my girlfriend who dictated my notes from my notebook over the phone, as I sat on the floor scrawling them down onto some cardboard.


Course, this genius idea led to lesson number two...

2) Never depend on notes written down on cardboard thats laying on the ground which is being used to catch drips from your glass job. In no time, my notes were under a gooey puddles of resin. Nice.


3) Keep that respirator on!!! I damn near just about passed out when I removed it to talk to someone on the phone. Some ventilation and air circulation might help here...have to remember to bring that fan next time.

4) Cured lam resin on floor, sticky. Cured lam resin on floor with uncured resin on top...not sticky. In fact, its as slippery as ice. I nearly ate it a few times with full bucket of resin in hand. Wheeee!!!

5) Don't just stand back like an idiot admiring your work while resin is hardening on your tools. Clean tools = GOOD, crusty tools = BAD.

All in all, I think the night went ok. I learned a lot, and alleviated some anxiety over the difficulty of the whole operation. Though, I'm not out of the woods yet...I still have the hotcoat and glassing-on of fins, and sanding. Below are some more random pics...sorry, I don't have "action" shots, it was just me, myself, and I.

Watching resin cure, about as fun as...um, watching resin cure.


Pulling the glass... Ooooh, aaaah!


Cutting the laps. Notice the shaping stands bare-naked...


Here I've already poured and squeegeed the deck, tucked the rails, and am cleaning up the bottom of drips and strings and whatnot. Notice the shaping stands are now covered w/ garbage bags. Something I realized would be a good idea AFTER I'd started pouring resin. Good thing I'd just bought a new box of trash bags and had them handy.


Mood shot of the double concave...


The view from below...


Cleaning up the laps. At first, I used a little electronic hand sander that I happened to have, but the dark sandpaper ended up leaving marks on the lams. So, I switched to white 80 grit wrapped around a piece of wood.


Front and back views of the top lam...


Are the lams supposed to show through this much? Will it blend/disappear when I hotcoat and sand? Hmm...


Closeup of the signature, dims, and little good luck jade stone from Chinatown embedded/laminated into foam. The dims are pretty small, but then again, I'm only 5'5"/135lbs...so it should be ok.


Stay tuned for hotcoating and glass-on fins...

kc