: Hi everyone,
: I just finished laying the last of my deck on Friday and planed and sanded on
: Sunday. I ran into one small(?) problem. As I was planing and sanding I
: noticed that there were areas where the strips were not perfectly
: attached. Mostly these places were where ZI had diffeent types of wood
: next to each other. In other words, I used red cedar for the most part-
: all of the hull and most of the deck, but I used Mahogony for accent
: stripes with white pine as a field color inside the acent strips. The
: mahogany seemed to have difficulty bonding to the other wood. (No problem
: glueing to itself, however.) I pried the strips apart a bit and applied
: more glue and placed a few stapeles just to hold everything in p[lace till
: the glue dried. My question is, do I need to worry about this in the final
: layup? Will the resin act as a glue? There are slight (1/32") or so
: gaps in the joint. Will the resin flow into this joint and act as glue?
: Also, I'm concerned about what will happen when I take the deck off the
: forms. What do I place the deck on to hold it while I plane and sand the
: insides? I cut out for the cockpit already, probably shouldn't have done
: that till the inside was glassed. I'm concerned that there isn't
: sufficient "meat" om the sides of the cockpit to support the
: deck uder the pressure of finishing. Any suggestions?
: One last question, how critical is temperature for the resin? I've been
: taking it outside to work on on sunny days, but I was going to be glassing
: it in the garage. I don't have heat in the garage, so I can't heat it even
: if I wanted to. (Which I don't) Will it be a problem if the temp gets into
: the 40's or so after the resin is put down?
: Lots of questions, thanks in advance for the help
: Paul

Lots of questions. Just a hint - you may want to use paragraphs or something to make it easier for people to read and find your questions. I'll take a shoot though.

About the gaps between different wood strips, perhaps its because some of the woods had a different tendency to bend in your stripping pattern. Were the gaps there to begin with when you stapled it or did they appear when you pulled the staples.

The resin will act as glue and fill the gaps although small bubbles are possible. You want to fill the larger gaps with thickened epoxy or slivers of wood or whatever.

You should glass the outside of the deck before peeling it off the forms to work on the inside of it so that it has some structural strength. Cutting the cockpit is okay before glassing.

temperature is fairly important. the temperature you mention is quite low and I'm sure it will take awhile (like weeks) to get the epoxy to cure, if at all, at that temperature. you may want to consider a change is building location or purchase of some way to heat it. The epoxy will also thicken up pretty good at those temps and make it hard to saturate the wood/glass.

Hope I got them all. Call the resin manufacturer about the minimum cure temp.

pete czerpak
albany, NY