: Need some tips, please. I spent the Labor Day weekend working on hatch lips
: for my Outer Island. I'm using the glass lip layups. I've been to the One
: Ocean Kayak site, and to other personal sites, to get instructions, and
: I'm still having trouble. Both attempts (consecutively, not
: simultaneously) have been throw-aways.

: Both times, I had a section of hatch where the taping and bracing to keep it
: in place failed, and of course, the lip lay up suffered as a result. That,
: I can remedy by just shoring it up more. But, the most distressing problem
: is that in both attempts, I can't seem to find the trick to getting the
: glass to lay up close and tight to the mold for the weatherstrip channel.
: After the glass dries, I take a look at it and it's messy, has ragged
: edges around the mold, it's got gaps between the flat section that the
: hatch will rest on and the sides of the weatherstrip channel, and it's
: just plain ugly.

: The wet sand in a bag doesn't seem to be pressing the glass tight around the
: mold for me, and I fear using more sand because I keep knocking the hatch
: out of alignment with the weight.

: One thing I'm doing that might be a (or the) problem is that after I lay the
: glass on, I'm putting a layer of wax paper between the wet glass and the
: bag-o-sand. Is that causing a problem?

: Maybe I'm hoping for too much? Do any of you have any close-up photos of the
: results I should be expecting? Any tricks to getting a good lay-up around
: the channel mold?

: Rick

I placed fillets of thickened epoxy around the gasket. I used a squeegie to level it off on top of the gasket. AFTER the fillets dried, I layered on the fiberglass. This worked much better than trying to do it with a soft fillet. On the Cormorant, I scrapped the inlet gasket groove idea. Sorry for the photo size.

Kurt