The book says to lay a
: 1 inch wide layer of glass around the underside of the cover. Id this
: necessary, it seems as if this would prevent the hatch from bing absolutly
: flush. I plan on getting this done tomorow, so any advise would be great.
: Thanks

I think that wax would work. Just dont miss any spots.

This is my first stripper. I did one hatch last night. I used Evercoat mold release - two coats. As you can see I masked the inside of the hatch as well as the inside seam of the gasket filling an area that would have let some epoxy get under the edge of the gasket. I then painted on the mold release.

The layup went pretty well. I probably went a little overboard on the glass attached to the underside of the deck. There is probably close to two inches overlap. The overlap under the hatch can be trimmed to size after you break apart the hatch.

Layed it up last night at 9:00pm. First I mixed up silica thickened epoxy with black pigment and coated the gasket and the corners of the gascket. I used 5 layers of 5 oz cloth with a little silica for the first layer of glass and then straight exoxy for the remaining 4 - all with black pigment.

@ 12:00am I went out and pealed up 6 little edges of the glass with a putty knife to give me starting places for wedging the hatch lip up this AM. I am glad I did. The deformed areas were trimmed off after separation.

Got up at 6:00am to break apart the hatch. Probably would have been easier @ 4:00am (@7hours). I am using Raka with 350 hardener. Temerature @ 73F. The separation took about 40 minutes with another 20 to rough clean up the edges. I made some wedges with scrap strips and worked all the way around. I did not think it was going to separate. I could tell the glass was releasing easily but I could not get the hatch to move. I decided that it was the suction of the gasket that must have been holding it in. I thought about driling a couple of little holes to break the suction. Instead I decided to whack the hatch a few times with a rubber malet (waking the whole family up). The hatched started to release and in a few minutes I got it out. The gasket came free of the hatch and stayed in the mold. It was not damaged and I will reattach it later.

I am not sure If I am going to do anything differently on the rear hatch except downsize the glass layup a little.

Hope this helps.

Here is a picture of the rough finished flange and a link to the flange right after layup. I think it will clean up nicely.

Jay